This week we rendered the last few sequences of our animation and finished the editing and compositing. After compositing we disgussed the sound and music. I finally added some cello and electronic sound for our video, while Wanxuan finished most of them.
The final result of our animation will be put in the next post. Here I just make a summary for our project and review some of our works.
Project summary:
Team members and roles:
Zhengzhong Liang: Script writing; Character Modeling (old man & robot); Texturing and Shading (robot); Lighting; Rendering; Compositing.
Ziyin Wang: Script writing; Layout; Animation (all shots)
Wanxuan Liu: Script writing; Storyboard; Character Design; Texturing and Shading (old man, part of livingroom); Lighting; Rendering; Sound and Editing.
Guanze Wu: Script writing; Rigging (old man, robot, props); Texturing and Shading (scene: kitchen & livingroom); Lighting; VFX (cloth & water sim); Rendering.
Yuehui Chen: Character textures refinement.
Script and Storyboard
At first, we decided to make a cel-shading scifi background animation film, but we were not sure what to tell in the story. Therefore, we wrote the script individually and shared our scripts together. After disgussion, we finally chose one of the script and spent some time to refine it.
Here is the initial script:
In a near-future, robot is widely used in people’s daily life. A computer virus explosion lead to a chaotic, which strains the relationship between the oversensitive protagonist and his suspected robot. A misunderstanding drives the protagonist to fight with his suspected robot, and died accidentally in this fighting. The story finally shows that the robot is not affected by the virus at all.
Then Wanxuan drew the storyboard. We disgussed about the storyboard later and realized that part of the camera in the storyboard need to be adjusted. In order to understand camera movements, we shoot a video as a reference for our layout and camera settings.
Modeling
We evaluated the modeling tasks in this project and decide to model the character and robot by ourselves, and other objects in the room would be collected from website.
The character and robot were modeled by Zhenzhong, other models are searched by Wanxuan and Ziyin. The design and modeling of robot went smoothly. However, we met some problem when we designing the character. Wanxuan finally drew a concept art for the character, which solved this problem.
After that, Zhengzhong quickly modeled the character. He then gave these models to me.
Rigging
I did all the rigging after Zhengzhong sent these models to me. I rigged the character and robot at first, all the rigging is rigged without any script or plugins. After that I realized that we needed a newspaper which can be folded and curved. What’s more, a rigged pot is required in this animation, too. Therefore, I modeled, textured and rigged the newspaper and pot. Unfortunately, the newspaper didn’t work well in the animation. This is totaly my fault.
Texturing
After modeling and texturing, we started to texturing our characters and the scene. We invited Yuehui Chen, who studies character animation in CSM, helping us to do some texture stuff. Wanxuan finished the first version of chracter textures and Zhengzhong finished the robot textures. I did the first version of scene textures. After that part of the furnatures inside the room were replaced by new models. Therefore, I asked Wanxuan to help me finish these parts of textures, while Zhengzhong and I keep refining other textures.
Layout
When we were making textures, Ziyin started build the layout. We were satisfied with part of the camera in the first version of the layout. However, the other part of it still had some problems. THerefore, Ziyin did some research on camera shot and then finished the second version of layout. The second version looks much better and we decided to animate based on this one.
Lighting
We then started to lighting the scene. Zhengzhong, Wanxuan and I finished the scene lighting. I did the first version of the lighting, while Zhengzhong, Wanxuan refined part of it. Me and Zhengzhong also figured out how to make the proper AOVs for toon shading. After that we rendered the scene and test the rendered layers inside After Effect.
Animation
Ziyin did all the animations by himself, which can be considered as a huge work. He did neary 40 shots of animations. He was quite strict with himself and even remade part of the animations. Thanks for his works, our characters starts moving and the scene becomes much more interesting.
Rendering, VFX and Compositing
In the next few weeks we started to render animations, while Ziyin kept animating other unfinished animations. Me and Wanxuan rendered animation layers, while Zhengzhong dealed with the compositing. Since some of the shots requires water simulation and cloth simulation, I used Houdini simulated these visual effects. I then send these files to Zhengzhong so that he could make layers for the effect and the scene.
Sound and Editng
Unfortunately we didn’t have time to ask sound art students to help use make sounds and music. Therefore, we decided to finnish this part by ourselves. Wanxuan finished the editing of the whole animation and the sound. The time was so limited that we only have chance to make the first version of animation. Though part of the animations can be improved into another level, the final result was still satisfied to us.
Reflections:
As a student who used to learn industry design, it is my first time to collaborate with other students to make an animation short film, which is a great experience to me. Since the time is quite limited, we don’t have enough time to refine some of the details inside this animation. I am quite happy with the result, but I think we can do it better if we have more time. Also, I learned a lot in this project. For example, how to solve new problems, how to keep the project rolling and how to overcome difficulties. It is quite struggling in part of the process but we finally achieved what we want. Also, I realize that my rigging and simulation is still not good enough. I need to spend more time to learn these things and improve my skills in the future.