What I was least confident in was the visual aspect of the film. My favourite parts of animation are visually stunning scenes in animated films that I grew up with from studios like Studio Ghibli and Disney. There were certain scenes that were so comforting and beautifully created that I had felt connected to and remembered to this day. I wanted to created something that would have at least a similar effect.
In a video documenting Ghibli’s background artist Kazuo Oga, who was known for his paintings of forests and sceneries. He had observed the trees he painted in person in close detail and was able to point out the visual traits of each trees. This enabled him to capture a scenery’s essence without having to directly copy from an image to create a painting that wasn’t necessarily realistic but familiar.
Taking away from that, I figured that it would be good to have an in-depth visual knowledge of the object I’d want to portray, so I spent a day taking photographs of garlic in its many forms in order to familiarise myself with its texture, weight, shape, and colour.
I didn’t realise until later that my camera had created a process video of me taking each photo, though I found it interesting to look back at how I set up each shot (I didn’t remember being so frantic, however):
Additionally, I also filmed myself preparing garlic in a variety of ways. Though I don’t have a solid idea of what I want my film to look like visually, these videos would hopefully become useful references in the future.
https://giphy.com/gifs/OOS524Mu4pSSHQwD7n
https://giphy.com/gifs/Lq2tWqKmbRgejDGbnD
https://giphy.com/gifs/garlic-2bA1OO82bpUd0tKbQ5
https://giphy.com/gifs/c4FEifePNGWA1Xyw1v
https://giphy.com/gifs/sb3HUN8tVCxHvBBCVL
https://giphy.com/gifs/dGHSz8p22tx9b9LUrF
This process of observation was quite enjoyable and made me take note of a lot garlic’s traits. By filming this from the top down from my point of view and only showing my hands, I found that this imagery would be quite universal. Perhaps a film that would in some way be applicable to most people’s experiences of everyday life is one where a character’s age, ethnicity, and overall appearance is not known. I think it would also be great to challenge myself in showing my identity through the objects in the background instead of my character.
I wrote down a plethora of ideas on paper on what I could do. Learning from the last project, I know now to narrow down my ideas into one solid concept with a clear message in order to stay on-track during the production process and have a strong film at the end. I found from the past that complex philosophical concepts like existentialism are difficult to capture and contextualize, especially when thinking about my identity, so my objective was to also find a concept that still has meaning but is not too abstract and wide.
What I’ve landed on is Garlic.
I like how silly and mundane the idea is upfront, and garlic is something simple that bears a lot of meaning to me personally.
The idea came to me one evening as I called my father in Thailand while I was sitting in the kitchen of his childhood home, asking him for ideas on what I could make for dinner. I listed out the ingredients I had in my fridge, including garlic, which prompted him to suggest me a simple pasta dish before recalling old memories of how he used to cook this dish for his siblings who he now barely talks to, even remembering the way they’d bicker over the table. It fascinated me how garlic and food in general can carry vivid memories not with the taste, but simply just the idea of it.
That prompted me to unpack my relationship with my family, especially my parents. I had a good childhood and still have a good relationship with them now, though things get more complicated as I look back and identify the instances that have impacted me to this day, and all the times I felt upset with them. Could this be seen as resentment? Could I love them as much as I resent them?
During my research, I found the poem Poplar Street by the poet Chen Chen, which included the quote:
I like jelly beans. I’m afraid of death. I’m afraid of farting, even around people I love. Do you think your mother
loves you when you fart? Does your mother love you all the time? Have you ever doubted?
Poplar Street by Chen Chen
The phrase “Does your mother love you all the time? Have you ever doubted?” made me look at my life through a different lens. I believe that what I felt was resentment to some degree. The way the past few years had kept me at home had led my family being overwhelmed by each other which only brewed more conflict, with my mother oftentimes cutting an argument short by saying “Let’s eat first.”
I think garlic reflects this sentiment well. Its strong taste meant that too much of it could overpower the taste of any other ingredient in a dish; garlic can be frustrating to prepare and clean up with all the layers of skin that gets everywhere; the smell of garlic would stick to your fingers for days no matter how much you try to scrub it off. Eating too much garlic at once can also give you acid reflux. Garlic could easily be overwhelming.
On the other hand, as I moved to London by myself, all the sounds I had found so annoying suddenly disappeared and each hour of the day often felt quiet. It was easy to feel so far from home (5,000 miles to be exact) and staticky phone calls sometimes couldn’t ease how hollow I felt. I packed sauces and seasonings from Thailand, though I used them with the dread that eventually I’d run out. I could get three bulbs of garlic for 90p, however, and as I peeled each clove in the quiet kitchen by myself, my anxiety eased like my mind could sense the bustling yet comforting atmosphere of the kitchen at home. Even the taste itself was close to the taste of home, and everything I had resented before felt like it was just enough.
I created a mindmap on a Padlet board in order to save links to external sites as well as to have everything in one place that I can refer to when I need to.
Here, I also explored the portrayal of food in art from a variety of sources such as Ghibli’s comforting food scenes, The Simpsons and how cartoon food didn’t need to be realistic to appear appetizing due to nostalgia, Hans Peter-Feldmann bread photographs, and Bake-off’s illustrator Tom Hovey’s outlook in treating the bakes as art.
The tutors’ feedback to my initial idea gave me a lot of reassurance and eased a lot of my initial worries of the topic of garlic being too simple/not serious enough, or that I wasn’t explorative enough in my choice to create a 2D hand-drawn flat-screen animation.
Project Brief Personal Project …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Unit: Exploratory Practice: Animation Arts (PU002397) Lead tutors: Su-Lynn Tan, Stuart Hilton Key dates Tuesday 15th February: Exploratory Practice Unit and Personal Project Briefing Wednesday 2nd March: Statement of Intent formative submission by 3pm via Moodle Wednesday 9th March: Interim 1 presentation – Proof of Concept Wednesday 27th April: Interim 2 presentation – Animatic and Proof of Concept Tuesday 31st May: Final Presentation Thursday 9th June: Summative submission by 3pm BST (15:00) via Moodle
Aims / Context This unit enables you to pursue a personal project and investigate an area of interest in time-based media, resulting in an individually authored work (or series of works). There is no constraint on form other than being required to justify its relationship to the discipline of animation and you will be encouraged to take risks, experimenting with techniques and exploring formats beyond the traditional. This is your opportunity to promote yourself as an auteur, defining your own personal style and outlining directions in your work. Your choice of subject and specialisation will be self-negotiated and guided by your unit tutor. You can work solo whilst gaining support from students/ collaborators in minor roles or work in small groups.
Brief Create a 1–2-minute animated film that promotes you as an auteur, defining your individual style whilst experimenting with techniques and formats that help you develop directions in your work. You should explore themes that have personal value to you. You will consider the relationship between sound and moving image. You can choose to focus on one specific aspect of your research or combine different aspects together but be careful not to overcomplicate things – simple stories with a clear message will work best.
Approach You will develop a project that demonstrates your ability to engage with the creative production process to complete an animation project showing significant conceptual and technical skill that has considered context and its relationship to its audience. After an intensive experimental testing, research and development phase, you must propose a sophisticated conceptual and visual language for your production. Your idea must be pitched as a treatment that outlines your concept, intended audience and viewing context. Key aesthetic elements such as visual language, pace, character, genre, environment and tone or ambience should be highlighted. An indication of how you intend to produce the project should be considered with technical needs and new learning being addressed. An indication of production planning should be outlined, informed by the project schedule. Developing your personal project with reference to contemporary and historical issues, themes, design, artwork and theories is an important part of the research that will give your project context and authenticity.
You should continuously evidence in your blog, a reflective and critical engagement in the development of visuals for storyboarding, environments, turnarounds, tests etc. The brief is open and there are no constraints on form, content or platform. However, there are basic production constraints: • Duration needs to be carefully considered and the works should aim to be around 1 to 2 minutes in length. • Duration needs to be carefully considered for pieces that are of an alternative format e.g. interactive / animated graphic novel; installation;performance piece. • Sound should be considered as part of the project development, pre-production, production and post- production process.
Delivery It’s important that you stick to the 1–2-minute length. A couple of seconds more or less are ok, but you should create 1–2-minute glorious minutes with high production values rather than a longer duration with inconsistency. You will deliver an h264 file at 40mbps, HD (1920×1080) at 25fps with sound.
Reading list
Beiman, N. (2016). Animated Performance: bringing imaginary animal, human and fantasy characters to life. Deja, A. (2015). The Nine Old Men: lessons, techniques, and inspiration from Disney’s great animators. Gilland, J. (2012). Elemental magic. Volume 2, The technique of special effects animation. Waltham, MA, Focal Press. Hooks, E. (2011). Acting for Animators. New York, Routledge. Polson, T. (2013). The Noble Approach, Chronicle. Thomas, F. and O. Johnston (1984). Disney Animation: the illusion of life. New York, Abbeville Press. Williams, R. (2009). The Animator’s Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Classical, Computer, Games, Stop Motion and Internet Animators, Faber & Faber Further Reading
Bacher, H. P. (2008). Dream Worlds: production design in animation. Burlington, MA: Oxford, Focal Press. Beloeil, G. R., Andrei. Castro, Robert. Art Fundamentals: Color, Light, Composition, Anatomy, Perspective and Depth, 3D Total Publishing. Levitan, E. L. (1960). Animation Art in the Commercial Film. New York, Reinhold Publishing Corporation. MacLean, F. (2011). Setting the Scene: the art & evolution of animation layout. San Francisco, Chronicle Books. Details of the University’s online referencing system for practical and written work: http://www.citethemrightonline.com/Home
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this unit you will be able to:
How the learning outcomes are to be evidenced in this assignment
Evidence of an advanced and explorative critical understanding of the practices and knowledge base of your subject & discipline (Knowledge, Enquiry)
Show that you have an advanced and explorative critical understanding of the practices and knowledge base of your subject & discipline. You can evidence this in the research and development material, as well as through the final work shown in the pdf and also discussed in your critical appraisal.
Evidence of skills needed to work effectively as part of a cross-disciplinary team to achieve goals (Process)
You should document the processes of collaboration and demonstrate in your pdf submission through the images you choose to present and in the annotations and commentary, in your selection of blog and/ or journal pages and your critical appraisal how collaboration could work in a common project, demonstrating an interdisciplinary perspective.
Evidence of an understanding of the importance of studentship through engagement and participation with the course and your student colleagues (Communication)
Show in your pdf submission and in your statement of intent and critical appraisal that you have an understanding of the importance of studentship through engagement and participation with the course and your student colleagues. You should reflect on how you used good organisational skills in relation to managing your workload, being punctual and having good attendance, and completing your work at key stages in a timely manner.
Evidence and understanding of the professional technical and artistic benchmarks within a subject specialism (Realisation)
Demonstrate in your submission through the critical appraisal and in the practical work, that you have an understanding of the professional technical and artistic benchmarks within your subject specialism
When given the theme of ‘Topsy Turvy’, the first thought that came to mind was the current pandemic we are in. I had to self-quarantine with my sister when returning home from London for two weeks in a small room separated from the rest of the house. I remember feeling disoriented and as though I was put in a new space even though it was a part of my house that I frequented. The thought that I couldn’t go outside also depressed me, even though, as my sister had very kindly point out, I don’t usually go outside. I felt that that didn’t matter though. The suffocating thought came more from the idea that my choice to go outside wasn’t there, regardless if I was going to take it or not.
A few artists came to mind at that; artists that create something surreal out of scenery that are at first glance, normal. These artists include MC Escher and Jan Švankmajer.An artist whose work I found very interesting from the briefing was Jonathan Djob Nkondo, specifically his film ‘DARK DAY‘ that played with angles and perspective as the background rotates.
I created a mindmap on a padlet which I will be updating as I develop my ideas.
N A R R A T I V E S T R U C T U R E
11/11/2020
A great writer thinks not only of what the character would do and feel, but what they want the audience to feel
In the lecture on narrative structure, I learned the differences between a feature film, a short film, and short form content with regards to the different elements and difficulties each type of film comes with.
When told that the main aim of any film is to elicit an emotional response, I began thinking back to all the writing and storytelling I had done in the past and how much of that aspect I took into consideration when writing stories.
I realised that a lot of the lecture’s content are what we as viewers already knew perhaps subconsciously, but here it was pointed out and listed into categories which I found very useful. It made writing a film making something more tangible with a certain structure as a guideline instead of a secret abstract work process that was dependent on the writer’s talent. It was also very interesting to see the types of villains or plot points listed out and finding how many films fitted these categories despite how different they were.
As the assignment for this project is to create short form content that is only 40 seconds, I was very worried as I had always been one to go over the time limit. But when given the plot points and film elements that were vital for short form content, I felt a bit more reassured.
Though my ideas are still developing, I had begun thinking of possible storylines that follow the guidelines of short form content which will hopefully become more refined as my ideas become clearer.
What I have currently are rough ideas and quite similar to one another, though hopefully that will change as I begin to gather more ideas and have a more resolved concept.
Possible storylines so far include:
The character is stuck in an Ecsher-esque environment with stairs and hallways going into different directions and has to find their way home, encountering rooms with tigers and dogs and bubbly outdoor scenery before discovering that they are protected by glass walls. The character feels relieved at first before realising that they also can’t get out of the glass room they’re in.
A character is confined in a small square room living their life day-to-day reading, watching TV shows, washing their hands, playing with a dog standing outside the room, eating with utensils that are wrapped in plastic, washing their hands, playing video games, and washing their hands. The cycle becomes so repetitive that everything begins to morph together and they start to go insane before a door is opened by another character, who invites them into a slightly bigger square room with a few more people inside.
A character is confined in a small square room with a small hatchet that served food wrapped in plastic. The room is bare and clean and sterilized, with one small window that shows a scenery of a forest. The character sits around all day and feels themself going insane, banging on the walls before one day a door opens and they step out just to realise that the scenery they’ve been looking at is a painting of a forest.
LOGLINE: Tai is stuck inside a small square room with one small window as he begins to go insane.
SYNOPSIS: Stuck inside, Tai is left sitting inside a room where he’s served sterilized meals and watches TV. There is one small window in the room where a clear blue sky can be seen. Days past with the routine repeating itself over and over and Tai grows agitated, trying to find a way out though it’s to no avail. Boredom and stress begin to eat at him as he hears every single sound from the TV play at once and he trashes the room until he faints. When he wakes up, an open door suddenly appears and he desperately sprints out to find a larger room, with a painting of the sky set up in front of the window.
I’ve created a mood board for the environment and crucial moments in the story, keeping in mind how I want the audience to feel at each point and what the character will go through.
C O N T E X T U A L R E S E A R C H
With the idea of being confined inside a room, I researched some films and historical events that portray this same idea.
OLDBOY (2003) starts off the film with its main protagonist Oh Daesu waking up in a small motel room where he couldn’t leave and was given the same food for every meal. He was held captive for no reason for years until he was suddenly released one day and set out to find his captor.
There is an apparent transformation in Daesu’s appearance (his hair and beard growing) to show the passage of time as well as the events occurring in the news. There is also a clear shift in his character at the start of his captivity, ten years in when he grew insane after witnessing the loss of his wife on the news, and when he was suddenly released.
Susunu! Denpa Shōnen(1998) is a controversial Japanese reality show in the 90s. For its challenge entitled Denpa Shōnen teki Kenshō Seikatsu(“a life out of prizes by Denpa Shōnen”), the show put its raffle winner, Nasubi, in a small apartment with no food, clothes, or appliances except for a table of envelopes and a rack of magazines. The challenge was to survive on sweepstakes from magazines by mailing them in with the provided envelopes. The only way to win the challenge and leave the room was to reach a monetary value of one million yen (approx. 7,218 GBP) worth of sweepstakes.
Nasubi spent 15 months naked and filling in contest entries before he reached his goal of one million yen, with a viewership of 17 million for the show. He was taken on a trip to South Korea to celebrate before being locked inside a similar room and told to earn enough prizes to equate the price of a plane ticket back to Tokyo. By that time, he was no longer accustomed to clothes and human interaction.
A similar transformation can be found in Nasubi’s appearance and personality from his happy-go-lucky attitude going into the challenge, and his complete bewilderment at the sight of an audience applauding him after 15 months of being naked without any human interaction.
White room torture is a psychological torture method where a prisoner isolated in a white cell designed so that there is no sound or shadows, aimed at complete sensory deprivation and isolation. Prisoners were found to have lost their sense of identity and experience hallucination as well as psychotic breaks.
C H A R A C T E R & E N V I R O N M E N T D E S I G N
18/11/2020
Based on my research, an effective way to communicate to the audience the transformation from sanity to insanity is to create a character that appears to be naive with short hair who ends up insane with long hair and rough appearance overall.
Tai’s character design
For clothing, I wanted to create a sense of unease as well as portray the idea of topsy turvy as things not seeming right. I thought about our attire in quarantine or working at home, where the top half that is shown on the webcam is prim and professional while the lower half that is off-camera is comfortable.
The final design I went with is the first one on the left, where Tai is wearing a neck tie with sweatpants and a cardigan as well as a pair of shoes. The combination of casual and business clothes may seem off or even comical, but plays well into the unease and uncertainty of the pandemic, not knowing when it will be over or when one can go outside but also too anxious to lounge around.
For the environment, I went with a simple white square room like in the moodboard. The room has a TV screen on one side and a window on the opposite side so Tai would have to choose between the two. There is also a small dog door big enough for a tray of food to pass through, but not big enough for Tai to crawl inside of.
I modelled the environment in 3D on blender in order to work out the angle of the billboard filling up the window as well as reference for the different camera angles when I draw the storyboard.
M O D E L S H E E T S
I tried to take into account all the possible facial expressions and poses Tai would be in and the different angles this could appear in in the storyboard.
Exploring boredom and confinementExploring insanity
When watching the different cinematographs, I noticed that the most effective ones are ones where the moving element is a small part of the image, especially in shots that are detailed. This made me think back to my childhood when I thought I’d see things move at the corner of my eyes and believed that the objects in my house were alive. I’d notice, especially in rooms with a lot of objects, that one small thing like a doll or the vase of flowers would move. I thought that this idea would make for interesting cinematographs.
I began to dig deeper in my childhood fear and possible things in my life that could have influenced it. I knew that growing up in Thailand, a country that’s saturated in Buddhist and Chinese culture, I’ve seen from a very young age the significance and meaning projected onto different objects such as dolls and sculptures and necklaces. Even in Thai media, objects such as necklaces with monk pendants were shown to ward of ghosts and spirits. Every big company and establishment would have a small resting place for the guardian spirit who owns the land and they’d be given food and drinks.
Growing up in this culture had instilled this thinking in me that inanimate objects had thoughts and were alive. This made me worried whenever I mishandled my toys or abandoned them for new ones, thinking that they were crossed with me. Perhaps that was why I kept thinking I could see them move.
I made a mind map on padlet breaking down my ideas and expanding them.
E X P E R I M E N T I N G W I T H P H O T O G R A P H Y
23/11/2020
Though I’ve dabbled in photography every once in a while, I never went past using the auto settings in my father’s DSLR.
My father’s camera is a Canon PowerShot SX620 HS
Although we were told how the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO affect light and the final image, I felt like I had to make that clear for myself.
I went around my house to dark bedrooms and bright balconies while testing out the different settings to see how it affects the image in different lightings.
I made a little chart for myself on a padlet to compare the different lighting and settings.
B A C K G R O U N D S T U D I E S
24/11/2020
With my theme in mind, I had a look at all the little decorative objects in my house that I was either scared of as a child or new ones that I feel would have scared me as a child.
I’ve found that a lot of the objects I was scared of were human-like vintage ones made of porcelain or wood, especially if it had been worn out by time or had parts of it chipped off. When making observational sketches, I noticed how the objects were often positioned on a difficult place for a child to access, be it the top shelf or amongst expensive tea sets we had to be careful around. It added to the fear somehow, as though the objects were looking at me from above as a child and I couldn’t control them since they were out of reach.
I took photos of the objects around the house. My mother was considerate in putting them where their colours match the setting, although making them blend into their surroundings would’ve probably made me paranoid as a child since I wouldn’t be able to notice them at first, making their first movement at the corner of my eye very jarring.
S T O R Y B O A R D
30/11/2020
Exploring the different dolls and objects in my house, I took into consideration its location as well as the material they were made of and what they were designed for. I animated them simply with minimal colour to map out the composition as well as see how affective the movement would be.
As the storyboard progresses, the more animated the objects become, starting with a garden statue that has a fern leaf waving over it, then two garden statutes of children on rocking horses, then a doll whose hair is flowing from the wind outside, then a porcelain doll that reflects flickering light, then a nutcracker that moves it mouth by itself, then two drawing mannequins shaking their heads.
I tried to keep the movements very subtle in order to create that ambiguous feeling of whether the object is actually alive or not.
I enjoy the developing part of the process, coming up with ideas that vary from one another before narrowing them down or merging some together. My what if questions go as follow:
what if… ocean levels rise and flood the entire world?
what if… there is an entire functioning society beyond the brine pools?
what if… fish live on land and can swim through the air?
what if… oxygen is a toxin that is slowly killing us?
what if… you wake up one day and everyone else in the world has disappeared?
Fish living on land feels like an idea that I can really explore in-depth. How would they interact with each other? With humans? I find that fish swimming around without the pull of gravity holding them back and living amongst a man-made urban space would create an interesting juxtaposition.
Would they divide into different countries and continents nearest to their native land? Would the more vicious predators living among the woods? I imagine the interaction between them and humans would simply be that of co-existence, somewhat similar to humans with pigeons on the streets.
my mood board
It was interesting to see the different moods and situations provided by different artists under the same theme. I gathered images with interesting colour palettes, varying tones and compositions, as well as narrative pieces that tell a story.
E N V I R O N M E N T C O M P O S I T I O N
27/10/20
Drawing out the thumbnails for my environment, I kept in mind the juxtaposition between marine animals interacting with urban man-made environments that I wanted to achieve. I went onto Pinterest to gather images of urban environments as well as images with interesting composition and colour palettes.
Though it was not my favorite drawing out of the six thumbnails, I chose to render the 4th thumbnail with the convenience store as I thought it would suit my initial idea the best. Convenience stores seemed like the perfect example of a man-made urban environment, from how saturated the colours are, and so many things are made available and instant in convenience stores that it’s easier to list out things that aren’t sold at convenience stores.
the refined/render environment
I felt like my final render could be refined more, although it captured my concept well and was enough to be used as a basic mapping of all the colours and tones of the environment. If I could redo this, one thing I would’ve kept in mind was the colour scheme and to make the fish more distinguished from the aisles of products.
F I R S T S T E P S I N 3 D
27/10/20
I was quite nervous going into this rotation as the little experience I had with 3D computer animation (which consisted of one workshop) was limited and I found it quite difficult. I realized then how it didn’t require drawing skills, but sculpting blocks into shapes using a mouse.
Following the tutorial video, I still wasn’t very confident. I decided to challenge myself, however, to create Wall-E for my robot on blender.
I was limited to the mesh shapes available as I didn’t know how to create more complex shapes or manipulate them. So to accommodate the more complex shapes of Wall-E such as his eyes, I had to break the shape down into the geometric ones that I can make and merge them together.
It was quite enjoyable as I got more used to the software, and I liked how the detail of the tires turn out, even though it took me much longer than the estimated time.
One thing I also realized doing this assignment was that although 3D computer animation doesn’t require drawing skills, it did require observation and analysis, breaking down complicated shapes into simpler ones, as well as always being mindful of the fact that what I was creating had dimensions and it will look different in different perspectives.
B L O C K I N G
28/10/2020
It was here that I realised that choosing a very geometric and precise environment may have been an oversight. It took me very long to work out the dimensions of different shelves in the convenience store and I have not even thought about the snacks and condiments being displayed on said shelves. Hopefully, I will be able to finish up more details later.
Though as despaired as I was trying to create proportional shelves, it felt very rewarding to see the environment I had drawn out starting to take form, like a store that was in the middle of being refurbished before opening.
If another 3D computer animation project ever comes around, I’ll be sure to keep in mind the actual blocking out when I was designing it as to not run into this problem again.
A D V A N C E D M O D E L L I N G & S C U L P T I N G
3/11/2020
I had thought that having animals in my environment would make things easier as proportionally they are simpler than humans and the animating process would be easier as they didn’t have a lot of limbs that require moving.
I was not entirely correct.
All my animals went through at least two revisions, partly due to the fact that I did not want to give up until a pair of fresh eyes could tell what kind of fish it was at first glance.
The sculpting process was difficult for both me and my laptop. Everything felt stiff and it began to feel frustrating when I couldn’t sculpt out the models the way I wanted it to look. Though I learned later on that I shouldn’t fuss over the details when it was going to turn into low-poly and it didn’t matter if the fish had eyes or not.
My poor seal went through three different stages of evolution as I tried to figure out the best way to block him out. Sculpting the face and body before turning it low poly like the tutorial did not seem to work well for him (as seen in the 2nd image) so I turned to the more extraneous task of sculpting him out in geometric shapes, starting off with a plane and a lot of extruding following after as well as choosing a different reference to follow where the seal’s characteristics are more apparent in low detail. I was quite happy with how he looked in his final stage.
blue whale
tuna
shark
Feeling a bit more confident in myself after the seal’s success, I added a few more animals to the environment using the same method. Though they’re not as detailed as the goldfish, which was sculpted smoothly before being converted to low-poly, I felt like I had captured the characteristics of these animals in simple shapes.
During this process, I also realised how vital references are to 3D animation. Elements such as scale and proportion have to be considered much more in 3D compared to 2D. References are now on the top of my list of things to consider carefully before beginning the execution of an idea. The references really helped me to capture the characteristics of each animal and added life to my environment, which I was happy with.
L I G H T & C O L O U R
4/11/2020
I still had doubts after blocking out and colouring my environment, as it still looked rough and like it was missing something. Lighting seemed to have solved that problem.
before lighting
after lighting
I started off trying to imitate the rectangular ceiling lights at convenience stores that would light up the different sections, which the area light was perfect for. That didn’t feel like enough to illuminate the fish in the store, however, so I added a few spot lights to locations where I felt that the fish were left in the dark, and to soften up their shadows a bit.
I also played around with making my lights the same colours as the colour scheme I used for the store to make the shadows feel like a part of the environment and not stand out starkly against the soft colours.
I went for a softer colour scheme than what I had on my concept art as I felt like vivid colours in such a busy environment would make it too messy. I quite like how this pastel colour palette looked on the store and the animals. It may not be realistic to what convenience stores usually look like, but I prefer this dream-like sequence much more, playing into the juxtaposition I had wanted.
A story began to write itself as I was creating my environment. First, it was a question of where are all the humans in this world? There are only fish. I thought about how the main fish in the environment were goldfishes. My initial decision for choosing the goldfish was that they’re the most common fish pets and are often put in different environments depending on how their tanks are decorated.
Goldfish, however, are natural predators that can crowd out the native fish population if released into a lake. I also found Shibuya Goldfish, a horror manga about schools of giant goldfish swimming in the air that invaded Shibuya by eating humans. The scene suddenly felt like a world that was colonized by goldfish, the only traces of human life left behind being the convenience store.
I recalled two of my initial questions when developing this idea: Would they divide into different countries and continents nearest to their native land? Would the more vicious predators living among the woods?
If it was a world colonized by fish and marine life that can swim through air, would the food chain within their species still exist? What if the convenience store became their environment due to predators roaming outside? It suddenly felt more sinister, having a shark and a whale circle around the store. I decided to go with this storyline and made the outside world a different tone from the inside of the convenience store to accentuate this idea.
It was a nice surprise to know that ideas can still develop itself into something more in-depth and solid even past the development stage, that it can still be uncovered during the technical process. I was very happy about how the world was building itself.
R E N D E R I N G
11/11/2020
Putting a stop to the making process, I made sure to leave a fair amount of time before the deadline to render everything—this was one of the smartest decisions I had made in this project.
It took me three days to render four animations.
I had expected the task to be fairly frustrating as rendering would take a long time, but I really didn’t know how my animation would really look until three hours later. It was a tedious trial-and-error process as I encountered a new issue every three or four hours, be it that objects that were hidden will appear in the final animation if they weren’t deleted, or that the rendering can mess up the colours, or that one of my objects’ surface was inside out so the lighting looked strange on it. It also turned out faster than I had expected because the lag in the software when I played the animation made me think it was slower.
I had set up a total of four cameras in my environment and animated two of them. One animated camera was more dynamic, moving around and tracking different fishes as they swam, although it was much too fast and messy when viewing it after rendering.
The block I had put up for scale that was hidden was also visible
I set a static camera in the corner of the store like a security camera to view the fish interacting with each other. I didn’t realise until watching this that one of the fish swims through the shelves.
For the final video, I’ve edited all the animation from different angles together.
Overall, I’m quite happy with what I have achieved considering how worried I was at the beginning of the project. I like the contrast in the pastel colourfulness of the store and the blue outside world, and I think I animated the movement of the animals well. There are some faults and mistakes that I had overlooked when I was working on it that I notice now (flying blocks, random objects, fast camera movements, etc.) although if I were given the chance to do this all again, I’d be more mindful of these details and leave more time at the end to fix everything.
3D animation in some parts what I had expected but in others completely beyond. There were aspects that I found easier than I had anticipated and some that were more complicated and tedious than I had thought. With the cameras and blocking, it’s essentially a digital movie set which I found very intriguing. Although the process of 2D animation is more enjoyable to me, I can see why 3D animation is a popular medium in film and video games because of how alive it feels. Though the process may be tedious and difficult with lags and errors, the end result feels incredibly fulfilling.
