W H A T I F ?
27/10/20
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.
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.
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.
The blender file can be found here
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.