"It's ALIVE !"

Just before christmas I finished the rig for my character. I wanted the rig to give the character restrictions which would reflect on the characters performance as a robo-prisoner. The image below shows the characters skeleton.

Apart from some minor mishaps (Detailed in my previous post) the rigging/skinning process went smoothly. Alan assisted me on inserting an extra spine joint, he explained that without it the character would look as if it was breaking which isn't exactly desirable. 

With the rig made I decided to give C-13 a test and rendered out a picture of him. See below.

Creating a 3D Character...The Remake

Whilst rigging my character I came across some problems with my model that caused a few issues when rigging/weighting. Because of this, I have decided to give my character an update, as seen below.

The changes made were to the arms and the body/torso, not too drastic, but they have made the character less clunky and a bit more refined and sleek which will help with the rigging and skinning.

Building Zone 3000

As well as working on the rig for C-13, I have also been experimenting with lighting and texturing on one of the first shots in the animation. Below is a composite of Maya renders and photoshop editing which I put together as a reference for what I am hoping to achieve.

Using this as reference I moved into After Effects to give myself a better sense of how to go about editing the final animation. Below is the result which I'm very happy with, although, there are some things that I feel I will alter slightly in the final edit.

Creating a 3D Character

Last week (Monday) I started modelling my character, the above image is the fully modelled character. After I modelled C-13 I moved on to the sets which I am still currently sorting out and looking at ways that I can light them dynamically and look pleasing to the eye. Below is a selection of render passes. (Wireframe, Ambient Occlusion and a Beauty pass)

After my character was modelled and textured, I wanted to have a glimpse at how the eyes would work. The 2D designs proved that the eyes were expressive, but I wanted to see if this also translated into 3D. This was done without a rig, I simply rooted the eyelid shape into the position I wanted. Below is the result. Expression (Left) Neutral Position (Right)

Escape Zone 3000 Interim Crit Presentation

Environment and Colour Design

With this piece of work, my plan was to get a better sense of the scale and colour of the environment, my plan is for zone 3000 to be a maze of buildings surrounded by water. Below is a quick colour key of a specific scene in the animation. I wanted the ominous, reddish-pink glow of the island's holographic sign to always be present within most scenes to give a subtle hint towards the danger C-13 is facing. As opposed to previous concepts and colour designs I have decided to crank up the saturation to give the film a more garish look.

Escape Zone 3000 Pre-Vis UPDATED

Creating A Colour Script

To give myself a better sense of my animation, I wanted to create a colour script. I've always enjoyed it when a studio add these in their 'art of' books.
My main goal with this was to see how the colours I have chosen work with one another and how they change the tone/mood of specific scenes.
I feel that it has worked and I enjoy both the vibrance and the darkness of each scene.
Below are larger images of the colour script.

C-13 Character Development

Since my last design post I have been working on my main, and only character, C-13. Below is the first page of development.

Whist working on this page of designs I was trying to figure out the shape of my character. I like my characters to be bold shapes that are nice to look at and will be fun to animate in the future.
From the set of body designs my favourite was No.3 because I liked the torso being quite round like a ball, so when it comes to animating I like having the sense of his body being a bouncy ball.
I also played with the idea of C-13 having a mouth. I liked it, but I didn't feel that I needed or wanted the character to have one, my reason for this was I felt that with the animation being a silent film, driven by diegetic and non-diegetic sounds,  I wanted to get across the emotion of the character through his eyes and body language. So from this I developed it further into C-13's final concept.

'Escape Zone 3000' Script (Second Draft)

'Escape Zone 3000' Robo-Shark Scene (Updated)

Like my previous version of this scene, the goal is to get a sense of pacing, Alan suggested that the previous video was too linear. This time I have created two different versions which are similar but are cut differently. I feel that I prefer version one, as seen above.

The Final Title Design

Designing The Titles

In my previous design post I showed early designs for the titles of my animation. The look will be inspired by 1980's movie titles but will tie in with the overall design of the story itself. Below are a set of new designs. A comment I got from phil was to maybe take away the colon from one of the designs I had done, the new take on this idea can be seen as number 1. in the concepts below.

For me, there are a few that stand out, 7, 8 and 9. Personally, I feel number 9 stands out because when looking at it, it has the look of a floor pan for a building/maze and the way in which it is boxed in acknowledges the characters confinement. Also, I wanted to try out a neon light look as this is already a factor in the design work for the environments (the neon arrows). Feedback for these designs is welcome. 

Designing 'Escape Zone 3000'

For my animation I've always had a sense of how I want it to look, The character, who is now known as C-13 (inspired by a Buster Keaton movie called 'Convict 13') being the aspect I have looked at the most. Below are my initial scribbles trying to find something from the rubble of drawings.

The picture above is, in a way, an evolution of the character from the first doodles on the left to the newest on the right. From here I began to develop a particular sketch that I liked, as seen below.

What I liked most about this design was it's simplicity, which is something that I was aiming for. There is also a sense of the Kubrick in the sketches within the shape of the head. 

I was also looking at Marvin the Martian when it came to the actual facial features or lack of,  I liked the idea of the eyes looking like they were floating in the middle of this head.

He currently has no mouth, which I am still not sure about, however,  I was thinking of giving him a small L.E.D screen mouth, which I may still do when I take these designs further. 

Next, I moved on to the environment. I have always had the idea that the character and the environment would contrast off of one another. Like many films I wanted to use what could be considered a cliche set of colours, specifically the orange of C-13's suit and the teal/blue of the environment. With this in mind I wanted particular things to stand out, mainly the red, neon arrows that point C-13 in the direction he needs to go, I chose red because of the ominous feel I want the viewer to have. There is also the green of C-13's eyes.

Zone 3000 is an island prison, it's big and in the middle of the sea, there is a bridge that leads in to the building but leading out I want it to seem endless, as if nobody knows where it connects to because nobody has travelled far enough. At the top of the island I plan on having a large holographic sign that revolves above, projecting the ominous, red glow. this is also the case with the designs below, the cell, which is where he begins his journey is illuminated by holographic cell bars.

I also had a look at designing the title, I wanted it to have an 80's vibe, like the rest of the film. I'm drawn towards the design in the bottom right corner of the image below, but looking back I feel there are a couple of others that stand out more. Feedback on this is more than welcome. 

With all this in mind, I plan on moving forward with the designs to something more finalised. 

'Escape Zone 3000' Script (First Draft)

The Robo-Shark Scene

Recently, myself and Alan were speaking about the action sequence within my animation. My main focus was to throw in as many obstacles as possible at the character for him to have to overcome. This was all fine, but Alan suggested I try and change the pace of the scene, this is when he suggested looking at Buster Keaton and I am very glad that he did. 

I've looked at the way that Keaton has set up his shots, specifically when getting across a gag to the audience. One of his rules is, if the camera doesn't see it, then neither does the character.

So with this in mind, and some other bits of inspiration, I have put together a rough animatic to try and get across some visual comedy in the action scene. The main focus of the video was to get a sense of timing, I've also added some royalty free music to give a better understanding to the way in which I feel the entire scene would come together.

'Escape Zone 3000' Storyboards

Escape Zone 3000 Pre-Vis (All Scenes)

I have now completed all the scenes for my pre-vis and I am very happy with how it has turned out, I have taken notes of certain scenes I don't feel work as well as others, some are because of camera movements and others due to the composition and layout of the shot, however, this aside I'm excited for it to be a fully realised animation.

 

From here I plan on moving onto designing and building more of the world. I do have some old sketchbooks from the summer that have quick scribbles of the character which I a plan on taking forward to create some more finished designs. 

Dance Escape Pre-Visualisation

The dance escape as previously mentioned is a reference/pastiche to Footloose. I always enjoyed scenes like this in film, I simply found them entertaining. With this pre-vis I have recreated various shots from the 1984 film whilst also incorporating a few of my own. 

The purpose of the scene itself is to get the character from A to B in an entertaining way. 

Visually, the scene will incorporate theatrical lighting and a smokey atmosphere to resemble that of the scene that it has been appropriated from. 

The next thing on my to-do list is to assemble a pre-vis for the final scene of the film tying it into the beginning. After that I will piece each pre-vis together to get a sense of the full animation. 

Action Sequence [Pre-vis and Notes]

As I said in my last post I wanted to take my storyboards and adapt them into a rough pre-vis to get a better sense of movement, which I have done. From it I personally have a better sense of the movement, and the way each shot moves from one to the other. It's also given me a clearer vision of how particular shots, that I felt would be difficult, will translate into animation.

My next point of call is the storyboard the next scene which is a kind of dance/escape scenario. 

After that I plan on putting everything together to see how it all works as one piece.

Storyboarding The Action Sequence

In my previous post I stated that I was eager to incorporate each of the problematic scenarios into my action sequence. I have gone ahead and storyboarded the sequence in a way that I feel keeps the audience's interest, I wanted the camera movements to be fast, and directly in the heart of everything. 

One thing I did was drop one of the problems, I decided to get rid of the jumping through hoops idea as I didn't feel that it was adding much to the scene and it was slowing the pace.

I was also taking into consideration the amount of time I actually have with this project, and was thinking of project management and the amount of animating I will have to do.

Below are the scanned in storyboards from my sketchbook

From this I feel I could make a quick pre-vis to give a rough sense of the camera movement and pacing.

As well as this, my next task is to choreograph a dance escape inspired by the warehouse scene in 'Footloose'

ACTION!

After a chat with Alan on Friday about the second act of the animation, it is clear that action is very much missing. His advice, become my own location manager and find areas of interest and try to get a feel of how a chase scene would take place within it. This sparked my interest, and got me thinking where could I go? What would be a great place to shoot an action scene and what kind of action could happen? 

And then I took this photo...

It wasn't until I was back home that I realised that this corridor is EXACTLY what I needed all along. The way in which it looked like a never ending corridor sparked a thousand ideas.

I thought, what could be the action that puts the audience on the edge of their seats? Could it be...

- A laser maze
- A giant ball of death

- A Jump through flaming hoops
- A pool of sharks

- A narrow escape through a closing door

All of these ignited excitement, but as I looked back at the picture of this somewhat never-ending corridor I thought, why not use all of these things. 

I imagined that to get the ball rolling (literally) this 'giant ball of death' acts as the catalyst that starts a chase, leading to each scenario happening within this corridor. As mentioned in my previous posts cartoons such as Fairly Odd Parents are things I enjoyed as a kid and the playfulness they have is something I want to inject into my animation. So, with each difficulty he faces within the corridor getting a little more 'silly' and quite literally jumping the shark and ending with a hopefully tense and narrow escape under a closing doorway. 

Below is a visually cinematic representation of what things come to mind when I think of my action scene.

Pre-Shoot Pre-Vis

Starting this I was finding it difficult getting certain shots from my mind on to paper, so instead of drawing out an animatic I wanted to try and get a better sense of the way in which the camera would move within a scene and how each scene would transition from one to another so I decided to create a very rough but useful "pre-vis".

As myself and Phil previously spoke about the ending shot (The character looking on towards the island he has escaped from) I haven't added that as the goal for this piece of work was to get an idea as to what would happen within the middle of the animation.

The ending feels slightly up in the air at the moment, again after watching it I feel it can be far simpler that I first thought, my first thoughts were to have the character escape, celebrate his freedom but then have to struggle yet again to completely make it out, but as I am typing this I feel like this idea adds maybe a little too much story to the animation considering it is a 'short'. I have added captions to the video to help give more of a description as to what is going on.

As I previously said I do feel that giving the character yet another escape scene at the end may be too much so, after looking at this I feel that personally I have a better sense of the direction the film should go, the ending still being the character escaping but within ACT 2 I feel he should definitely face some small challenges, which restrict him from getting to his goal which is to find the elevator out. But before this, to get there he must face things like, corridors filled with lasers in which he must zig zag his way through etc.

Personally I love shows like 'Fairly Odd Parents' 'Spongebob Squarepants' so there are times where I wanted to get certain things that the creators of those shows do within this animation so it ends up being fun and slightly surreal with characters appearing in one place then instantly in another, hopefully this can be seen within some shots. I am feeling very optimistic about this idea, the more I work on it the more I feel that it is begin to take the shape of something that audiences will like.