Rose's Portfolio
Research
When we first started this unit I knew that I wanted to make a short story. I had previously designed two characters in portfolio. I wanted to use them in this story. I wanted my story to have a message behind it. I thought of advertising this towards teens or young adult girls. I wanted to talk about body positivity or issues that women in their twenties go through.
Idea 1
The beginning of this video inspired the layout that I wanted. I wanted to show my character's routine over a few months and how it changes. I was going to show the different times of the day and how she changes her habits over a certain period of time.
Both of these videos inspired the story I wanted to show. I liked some of the themes she talked about and I wanted to include them in my animation. This idea didn't get greenlit so I changed it completely to have a lighter tone.
Image Inspiration
Idea 2
During Portfolio I kept animating different characters and how each of them behaves and acts in a different way. I saw these two videos and they inspired my next idea. I like how in the first video there are different characters walking into the same environment but each of them is different. In the second video, we have an ongoing montage of the characters going on about their day, as seen from a still camera.
I thought that it would be good practice if I animated different characters reacting to the same environment. This would be viewed from a still camera and they would each be walking in and interacting with the environment in a different way.
Environmet/Layout Inspiration
As a way to help myself come up with the layout of the story, I started looking at some environments. Since I wanted to animate different characters I thought why not animate a woman a man and a child. With this, I thought that they could be a family so I started looking at house environments.
I found these environments on TurboSquid and I thought they were perfect. I adored the style and they fit perfectly with what I wanted my animation to look like. Unfortunately, they were way beyond my budget and I couldn't afford to buy them, so I decided I was going to model the environments myself. I do have basic knowledge of modelling in Maya and I do enjoy it so this is something I was excited to do.
Story Beats
Coming up with my story was probably one of the biggest challenges I faced this term. We were given a workshop on story beats and how to structure a story.
3 Act Structure
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Every story has a beginning, middle and an end.
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The beginning (Act 1) is where the story is being set up and introduced to the audience. This is also known as initiating incident.
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After this in Act 2 is where more obstacles come into play, also known as progressive complications. Now we reach the climax of Act 2.
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Finally in Act 3 is where the story starts to wrap up and the resolution takes place.
I placed these elements into my final idea.
Further Research
Cloth Simulation
I started looking into cloth simulation back when I was working on one of my previous ideas where the child pulls the tablecloth. I didn't end up using that idea in the end but nonetheless, it was interesting learning a bit about cloth simulation.
I already had basic modelling knowledge thanks to one of our previous units but I wanted to look into sculpting tools. These were particularly useful in building the teddy bear for the child. Especially when I would need to smooth out the mesh.
These two videos helped me understand how to get a character to grab and hold an object. Since my animation required my characters to hold pick up and put down objects these videos were extremely useful.
I wanted to render my animation at the end so I started looking into lighting. I found out that you can either render with Maya or Arnold. This video helped me figure out what type of lighting I wanted.
Finally, I looked at how to render using Arnold.