I adjusted the length of every shot in the storyboard and composed them into a video for reference. Here is the video link. Music from INDIE FILM & MUSIC.
I realized that the whole project might take a very long time to do. So, I decided to take it as my final major project. For now, I’m going to focus on only Scene one. Also, for the integrity of the story, I need to finial Scene 4 which serves as the end of the story.
For the rig, I’m going to use a female rig from Characterrigs.com.
Neka Rig
I tested the rig on Maya and find that color of her clothing may be too bright. And that might not match my horrible scene.
I tried to modify the color blending according to the existing match. I tried the possibility myself and found that it didn’t look good, so I decided to use the original one first, and then if necessary, change the color of the clothes later according to the character and story when rendering and lighting.
For the IK/FK choice. I decided to use IK for my arm because there is a lot of shot the character need to hold his hand in the right position without swaying around.
So, I have the idea right now. But I need to polish the details. Back to the idea of Parkour, I found it doesn’t attract me anymore. I realized what I wanted to do was actually discover the inner self, break free, or somehow reconcile self with the bonds of his past self.
For example, I made a mistake in the past. After many years, I still couldn’t forget it, so I couldn’t get over it. Then what I want to show is the concept of facing up to my past self and saying it’s ok.
But at the same time, I remember what Alan told me to be different from other animations, so I plan to intersperse the self-expression part into a complete animation in a more experimental way to show the inner struggle of the character.
In terms of animation, I intend to use athletics to present this fusion of self. Because I think it is very similar to parkour in a way.
This week I continue working on refining the storyboard. I feel like some weird perspective may enhance the feeling of weird, like the angle from roof to floor with maybe 45 degrees imitating as a monitor. In that way, the animation will have many camera movements and shot editing. So, I think the challenge for me is to do continuity editing to help the audience know what is happening. And meanwhile, make sure it is horrible. But maybe it’s not all about continuity to create horror. Because this uncomfortable discontinuity can also help to create an atmosphere of fear.
Heavy Rain
What’s more, I want a shot that looks out under the bed. My assumption is that the character is lying on the bed and fell asleep, and then the camera sees someone taking two steps near the bed, and the character wakes up but finds that there is no one nearby.
Under Your Bed
Also, the camera might be at an unusual angle to emphasize the feeling of weirdness.
Heavy Rain
Part Two – Corridor
Character wants to open the door of her room. Leave negative space behind her in the scene.
Then camera suddenly cut to a can falling to the floor. Need to add the sound effect of collision.
Then cut back to the character, the lens rotates up in order to show that the proportion of the character in the scene is small. That’s also serve for creating the atmosphere of fear.
The view of whole corridor from character. Lights suddenly turn off one by one with a slow speed. Also, a sound of walking come up along with the light change.
The final scene of corridor. The character ducks into his room quickly.
Part Three – Room
A tilted angle with some rotate to emphasize the feeling of character’s afraid.
Then give a cut to the character laying on the bed, fall in sleep. Maybe a close up to the painting on the wall because I want what to do a change on them later.
A shot under the bed find someone take two steps to bedside. Then suddenly disappear.
The character wakes up from the bed and gets out of bed to check if everything an illusion. The painting an the wall may be changed.
A close up to her face. Then zoom out and shift the focus from the character to the painting on the wall.
I’m planning to make an animation about parkour. Alan said that there are so many animations about parkour. So, how to make it different from others is important. He suggested me to pay more attention to the background and origin of parkour, as a way to specify the content of my own parkour animation through more in-depth research.
So, I did the search and found that parkour was originally intended to express a spirit of freedom, challenge, and self-transcendence. Then in the slow development as a kind of sports, it also carries the corresponding sports spirit.
Therefore, in terms of stories, I naturally thought of a free soul who was bound in the character’s heart, and he used parkour to achieve self-transcendence and break free from the shackles. What I was trying to do was express the struggle between the external and the interior world. The outside was that he was parkour, and the inside was that his mind was imprisoned in a box, bound by all kinds of bandages, as his parkour became more and more intense, the bandages finally emerged from the outside and were successfully broken by him.
I have a draft storyboard that was drawn last term, so the first thing I think I need to do is to refine the storyboard. Since I wanted to render the atmosphere of horror, the camera language probably helped a lot with the level of horror.
My initial draft of storyboard
So, I’m trying to break the initial storyboard into detail. First of all, the story has to have a beginning, where the protagonist finds the hotel and enters, but some strange things happened in the process. And these things arouse fear to affect the audience.
For the entering hotel part, I referred to my favorite Music Video ODDINARY made by JYP Entertainment. Part of it is because I admire their storyboards and want to try them by my own.
Part One – Entering Hotel
Character walks to the door of hotel.
The character looks into the hotel. The audience can feel there might be something wrong within the hotel through the facial expression of the character. At the same time, I put the position of the character on the left side of the scene and left blank space on the right side and her back to create the effect of negative space. To show the unknown in which something could suddenly appear at any moment.
The view of what the character saw. Thing falling down. The thing might be related to the whole scene. I want it to serve as a hint to enhance the horror atmosphere.
A close-up of the character’s face show she is scared by the falling. Also would be a jump scare which coordinates with the sound effect.
She covered her mouth with her hands in surprise. Then she suddenly realized something and wanted to see if there was someone behind her. She finds nothing and then goes into the hotel.
The neon light with the words “HOTEL” flashed as there is a short circuit on the transmission line, and the words suddenly changed to “THEOL” in the flash. Theol. stands for theology. This is also a place that makes the feeling clear to the audience of there is something wrong with the place.
Then I want to shoot the scene of the door closing without the character in the scene. The audience can read that the character already went into the hotel from the camera language.
For this week, I keep working on producing animation. For this storyboard, it just shows Dad is putting the cake down.
Storyboard
Reference
After discussion, I zoomed in the camera a little bit and located the birthday cake slightly to left. Also, we want the effect that camera focus on the birthday cake, using plus background light and bokeh to highlight the cake. So, I maintain the focus on the cake.
I think the girl may need to move a little bit, although the light in render may be dark. Because the movement of the girl can still be seen by audiences. But it’s ok for now.
For the next storyboard, I need to animate the scene of the girl wishing. Kaiwen recorded the reference to me to make it more clear.
StoryboardReference
For the first draft, I got the feedback of slowing down the part of looking down and lifting up hands. Also, the girl need to have a breathing cycle while she is wishing. When the girl bows her head, her back should follow though as well. When the hands come together, the shoulder joints should rotate inside a little bit. I feel Kaiwen understand the rule of animation very well that his advice are very useful.
For the sound part, Zhuxuan and I recorded the birthday song as Mother and Father for the girl. Also, Zhuxuan recorded some voice of the girl.
There was a problem when I did the model replacement. The plate of the model I want to replace is much thinner than the model I create in draft animation. So, the position changed causing the collision of hand and food with plate.
Original pose
The pose after directly replaced
So, I adjusted the poses and polished the animation. Here is the result.
The replacement of model is also a valuable experience to me. I feel the draft model may need match the final model in mesh. Otherwise, all the animation work maybe to be remade.
This week Friendred gave me some feedback on the animation I did last week. It also can be check in my last week work progress diary. He suggested me to adjust the pose of moving the brush (pencil for now) up and down to back and forth. But it’s quite interesting because when I filming the video reference, I initially think the way of make up is back and forth. So, after I finished filming and checked it with my teammate Zhuxuan Zhang. She told me that kind of thinking is wrong. And the correct gesture is up and down. Otherwise, the wrong gesture will break up the powder in reality.
I think it’s important to refer to the reality rather than imagination. Because I, as an animator am unfamiliar with the make up stuff. If I don’t find a correct reference for my pose or ask the person who familiar with that, I won’t have the knowledge of how to animate it correctly. Therefore, I will pay more attention to this and find enough reference for filming the video reference in the later animation.
The animationThe reference I used (Up and down)Previous reference that I decided not to use (back and forth)
Work for this week, I recorded all the reference of the rest of the animation I need to animate according to the storyboards. In that way, I will get the idea of what timing and staging of my animation should probably be. This storyboard need to be designed into a scene of Mom and Dad putting dishes onto the table. For the reference, I filmed a few clips to find out the right way to put the dishes while showing the feeling of weight. So, I put some real food on the plate in order to create the sense of weight. Also, I’m trying to keep my pose to be more natural and relax.
Storyboard
ReferenceDraft animation
I got feedback by Kaiwen to zoom in the camera to get closer to the table.
So, I adjusted the camera and the position of the plates. Also, I adjusted the timing of putting hand back. After discussed with Kaiwen, I decided to add a act of putting down the plate for the hands on left. I want to avoid putting the plates in the middle of the scene. Basically, I followed the Rule of thirds to locate the place of the plates. Then the animation goes to this:
Kaiwen suggests me to slow down the speed of the left hands. So, I slowed down the animation of them by 5 frames. The result is acceptable for me.
Then I still feel the speed is quite fast. So, I slowed down the whole animation for 10% and get the final result for this stage.
I converted the first two story board into animation. But due to the fact that we haven’t model the loose powder box and the brush. So, I used pencil and a empty box as a temporary substitute.
Kaiwen gave me some advice of relaxing the left hand while holding the box like this:
So, I adjusted the pose of left hand to this feeling:
What’s more, he also suggested me to animate an upward trend for left hand when right hand approach it. But I’m worrying that might be too dramatic. But of course I’ll try that.
For the modeling part, I have modelled and unwrapped the UV of the chairs.
In class, we formed by 5 discussing the topic ‘Take 1 element from each other of the members of your group’s work, is it possible to form a new project?’
We have two plan. The first is a 3D horizontal game (element from Kaiwen and me) with the main character old angry man (element from Wanxuan and Zhenzhong) combine the Cyberpunk background (element from Mengyang and Yaozhang). The story is about robot took human’s job opportunities. So, our main character lose his job and decide to destroy all the robot. He can collect different weapons on the road to fight against the robots. We made a slogan for him “Make Human Great Again!”
The second plan is a music video (element from Mengyang and Yaozhang) with the main character a little girl (element from Kaiwen and me) and a robot (element from Wanxuan and Zhenzhong). The background is under human society’s fight against the robot. And a girl falls in love with a robot. The story describes once the girl was in danger during the war between human and robot. A robot soldier saved her life. And the girl cannot stop herself to fall in love with the robot.
