My animation showreel, featuring scenes from mainly three short films (Squeaky Clean - MA Final Major, Petrified - BA Final Major, Dreamcatching - MA Group Project). For concept and character design you will have to watch it to the end. Music - Akilah by Turiya Mareya Latin Jazz Ensemble.
Ladies, gentlemen and animation ppl (a species of our own), I present you my MA final major project, CG animated short, ‘Squeaky Clean’. Enjoy!
Three days before hand in, I thought I’ll post a few stills of the rendered shots, which I must say I’m quite proud of how they are looking. Still need to rerender a few passes and colour-match all the shots together but if someone told me last September that I’d know my way round XSI and achieving these results I would have had my dooubts. I even replaced some of the 2D effects I was planning to have with CG elements, and funnily enough it took me less time to achieve a good result that blends in with the rest of the style.
Well, enough blabbing here are the stills. I will be saving the animation till next week when it is all put together and looking Clean! Click to enlarge.
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Spend most of this week carrying out some extreme UVing. Used Roadkill for the initial unwrapping and then tidy up diferent objects togehter on the same maps - something like puting together puzzle pieces. Same as for the boy, I did ambient occludion render maps for each objects and used them in photoshop to produce some sketchy shading. I had to keep myself from adding too much detail or making the textures too realistic since I want to keep the film’s look more simple and stylised.
The results so far:
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I decided to keep the walls and floor in the same colour to keep it less distracting. Perhaps a slight bump map to give the feeling of tiles. Well, now that I got the look sorted I can go back to animating!
How exciting, i have finally blocked out all the rough animation for my film! Plus I came up with a new title, since ‘Bath Day’ is not really that exciting.. I didnt upload the original block test since there have been a lot of changes so it doesnt really reflect how the story will be presented. You can see the development of the visual sequence of events comparing with the original storyboards.
Please feel free to submit any comments and feedback since it is essential at this stage - while alterations are still feasible! I would love some new perspective on the whole thing. Enjoy! and keep in mind that the finished polished piece will look so much better!
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3Nyi9mRq4k
The bathroom has been refurbished. Or it wil be very soon. Here is my new colour concept:
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| new colour concept |
Since the camera fish-eye lens did not quite work for the scene - as my tutor pointed out everything would be too ‘wibbly wobbly’ - so I deformed the room producing a similar distortion effect. I also added some more items in the room like a towel, loo roll and a door. Back to weighting the boy then…
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| room model |
It is sometimes difficult to get 3D to look as you imagine. For me anyway, perhaps my 2D background makes it easier for me to imagine how I would draw or paint something - now i need to translate that into computer language and techniques. Nevertheless, these are some early tests of how the room and the octopus would look, i think i got carried away with the textures. My next attempt would definitely be Simpler and Less Distracting!
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| room texture test |
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| octopus texture |
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| comp tests |
In the two images above i tested the fish-eye lens to get a distorted effect and then applied some ‘artistic’ filters in XSI compositor. I liked the rough pastels one and notepaper best, they could be a possibility probably mixed with other effects like toon ink outline like in the textured image above.
After a lot of sketches and photo research of millions of bathrooms i ended up with this image and colour scheme:
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| bathroom colours |
And this is how it turned out in 3d:
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| bathroom model |
Still needs work and improvements, i will end up deforming the actual room rather than using a fish eye lens and I have been rethinking the colours after playing around with textures and getting carried away..
Storyboards for the film. Timings for each shot will be finalised with the block test.
Click to enlarge!
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After a few brainstorming and brainwrecking sessions i came up with an idea for my final major project while trying to sleep. A mixture of my childhood and the amazing comic character Calvin (& Hobbes), I thought of animating a story of a boy that hates bathtime. He imagines that there is a huge octapus in his bathroom that is very determined to wash or eat him or both. After a lot of kicking and screaming the boy loses the fight and is plunged into the bath tub with his clothes still on. In real life, it was his mum that put him in the bath tub and the octapus is just a floating bath toy.
Some early sketches and character studies:
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| concept drawing |
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| sketch |
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| squarehead boy |
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| character pozes |
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| octobathus |
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| tentacles |