BLOCKING
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.
ADVANCED MODELLING & SCULPTING
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.
LIGHT & COLOUR
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.