Final Major Submission Post
Final Animation:
Moon is a 5 minute animated short that focuses on a trio of characters and their everyday lives sustaining the forest they live within. The story is driven by fantasy themes and cultural anthropology, creating an ethereal character relationship where one cannot live without the other. Spirits named Yin and Yang represent cosmic duality. Gin is neither human nor spirit, but an in-between entity that drives the story as our protagonist. Yin, Yang and Gin spend their days maintaining their cabin, leaving offerings for spirits and upholding an authoritative role over all the kami spirit inhabitants of the forest. And as the sun sets, Gin lifts the moon into the night sky…
Blogpost Links:
Major Outcome Proposal:
Texturing:
Rigging:
Shot Renders:
Animating:
Major Presentation:
Art Of:
Life Drawing:
Reflective Statement:
I chose to combine major with my previous minor and premise projects, meaning I’ve worked on this narrative for a year. Major has focused on rigging, animating, and rendering to complete my short film. Titled Moon, the 5-minute animated short focuses on a trio of characters and their everyday lives sustaining the forest they live within. The story is driven by fantasy themes and cultural anthropology, creating an ethereal character relationship where one cannot live without the other. Spirits named Yin and Yang represent cosmic duality. Gin is neither human nor spirit, but an in-between entity that drives the story as our protagonist. Yin, Yang and Gin spend their days maintaining their cabin, leaving offerings for spirits, and upholding an authoritative role over all the kami spirit inhabitants of the forest.
I’m still very proud of this narrative, this has given me the motivation to make a quality animation.
At the start of Major, I finished texturing the secondary characters and props. This meant making colour maps for hessian baskets, magpies, and kami spirits. I combined these with opacity maps to manipulate the transparency of my characters, adding to their ethereal personalities. Texture continuity has been an important consideration, I had to ensure that my characters and props would collectively create a convincing environment. I achieved this, for example, by recycling the same stone and moss colour maps to use on my cave, rock, Jizo statue and Toro lantern models. Additionally, my colour maps all share low colour saturation for stylisation that matches my original concept art.
Once texturing had finished, I moved on to rigging. The basic animation showcased in my PreViz meant I could get away with simple body rigs for my three main characters. I used the QuickRig tool to generate body rigs, then skinned them to my models accordingly. Gin had the most advanced rig, requiring arms and blend shapes for expressions. However, characters Yin and Yang had no need for arms or expressions. I had planned this rigging process as far back as Premise project, knowing that rigging wasn’t a strongpoint for me and worked around this through character design to reduce the rigging workload. I do believe my rigging knowledge has improved when compared to last year’s Jetpack Jones project because, this time around, I diagnosed problems without help. For example, when Gin’s head geometry wasn’t working with the rig, I was able to use logic and change its group within the outliner, fixing the problem without outside support.
Changing Gin’s hair and eyes to a glowing texture during the final sequence was a spontaneous decision, making the character more visible and ethereal within the dark environment of the final sequence.
My storyboards are designed to recycle a single walk cycle, reducing the time I needed for animation. I utilized my research into nCloth to achieve prayer flags moving in the wind, and Gin’s flowing ponytail during the final animation sequence.
I used Arnold stand-ins to reduce lag in Maya’s viewport and reduce render times. Downsides to this are poor accessibility for adjustments because stand-ins appear as ‘bounding boxes’ in the viewport, rather than shaded models. Changing this setting causes lag, which defeats the purpose of stand-ins. Efficient render times were a huge benefit to using stand-ins, however.
I reduced render times further by using render passes. Shot 7, for example, is comprised of three render passes. One for the sky dragon, the magpies and foreground trees, and for the midground. Therefore, areas of the composition that are unchanging are rendered once. I also used render passes for cinematography, for example, in shot 34. The blurred foreground branches are a single static png render, the rest of the composition is a render sequence. I layered these two passes in Premier Pro and used a blur effect on the branch render pass.
Postproduction was the most exciting process of Major, seeing the animation finally come together after a year of work. I chose to use Premier Pro over After Effects, because its interface is simpler, and postproduction was a straightforward process. I used the Previz project file like a template, meaning the soundscape needed little work. I simply replaced the Previz clips with the new render clips.
I’m very pleased with my final animation, which has sustained ideas from premise project and turned them into a compelling little universe. Being able to turn a thought into polished 3D short has inspired me to continue similar projects in my spare time.
I’m most fond of the landscapes showcased in Moon, which are compelling with the addition of lighting that changes from day to dusk. These environmental strengths come from continuous research, even this far into a project. Research led me to using aiatmoshpere to create light rays that drastically elevate a composition. I therefore see lighting as a strength to my final animation, as well as landscapes.
I think animation could be improved, for example, walk cycles show inexperience. I think the films animation in general requires more attention to ‘in-betweens’ and secondary movement. It’s this detail that would remove the stiffness shown in my final film. I think this issue stems from using simple rigs, and I’ve learnt that a comprehensive rig is needed for the most basic animation to be effective.
I believe Moon showcases all skills I’ve learnt throughout CAA and proves robust knowledge of Autodesk maya. Overall, Major has been smooth sailing and a positive end the CAA course.
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