Ideation:
The process of this film started as with most others: a story. Bruce E. of ACCAD had concocted a piece that addressed a modern concern of pollution and the desire to overcome monumental odds. This is how I would describe the synopsis of the piece:
Process:
I was a part of the writing process in the beginning. I worked with our Director, Animation supervisor, and Artist to help conceptualize the story, setting, and plot. I also worked as the part-time Production assistant, and as a character animator. I will cover most of my roles, and the those of others, for the posterity of the production. **The film itself was never finished, but many considerations of the process informed us of our mistakes and helped with future production processes.** Main roles (myself):
After working with the storyboards and refining them daily, I took on the task of plotting them into an animatic and working with timing. The result below is the completed animatic (not final) of
"The Stargazer". Sounds were placeholders and most were from freesound.org.
Then we moved onto creating a scene shot-list for the film. We ended up with about ~75 different cameras. I had to take all of those and apply them to environment with the conditions of showing the separate elements to the scene in an effective way. We waited on the 3D environment team to layout the scenes and select where the character was in relation to the camera. Later, steps followed:
Next came concept work and character definitions. Most of the imagery is artwork created by Leah Coleman. You can find more of her work here: Leah Coleman. Below are character turnarounds, clothed/unclothed geometric considerations, and poses of Kai in moments of movement and rest.
Full character model found here: Bruce Evans - Kai Model.
Kai - Marmoset 3D Manipulation.
Below is an example of my character animation process from The Stargazer. Kai is attempting to open two large windows that lead to an outside ladder on the side of the skyscraper on the left. A (pre-finalized) character animation on the right side.
The character rig was created by Tori Cambell. She supplied the universal controls, the global scale controller, eyebrow rigs, IK / FK rigs and switches, elbow/knee pole vectors, and blendshapes for Kai. Below is an example of the rig. More of here content found here: Tori Campbell. On the right, you can see what our director, Bruce E., decided upon for a final teaser.
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May 2020
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