Week 1

To begin this project I started later than the other project so I had less time to come up with an idea. I wanted this project to be shorter but less “standard” as a 3D project, meaning if I had to animate for less time then I would be able to be more experimental in my project than the other one. I began searching online for interesting 3D animation techniques, using Youtube, Reddit, Artstation, Instagram, etc for ideas.

Week 2

Online I found several videos (mostly using Blender) of experimental 3D effects that I could potentially use. I thought that building my project from a new technique that I had learned could be interesting – applying the technique to a theme that interested me. For example, the nanotech effect below being used in a project about environmental changes – reversing the effect to show models being slowly disintegrated that could represent the damage done to our eco-system. However, I didn’t think that I had a good enough idea to do this justice – there is often so much work that is relating to environmental issues that I feel that it isn’t worth creating something in that subject area unless you can make it especially poignant. I also thought that the fish animation could be interesting to use metaphorically, with multiple fish representing something else. However, I also didn’t think there was a good enough idea to use this, so I moved on and searched elsewhere.

Week 3

I had heard of a technique called the toon shader in Arnold and thought that you could get a nice looking effect with this that looks a lot different from the standard 3D animated look, giving more of a cartoony almost 2D look.

I tried to follow this tutorial with a test character model (not one that I had made), but was unable to get an effect that I liked with it. Therefore I decided that I would probably not be able to create a project in this style properly – it could potentially be a lot of time spent fixing bugs, and committing time to already create a character model and rig before I even knew if the project would work. Therefore I decided not to use this technique.

Week 4

In week 4 I began my actual creating work (I spend a lot of time trying to come up with good ideas which often allows less time for actual work. I decided that I would like to make something similar to this video, though due to how I had time constraints now that I would probably have to make something that didn’t deviate much from the basic tutorials. I thought that this kind of character fits a more comedic, childish themed project, so began thinking of ideas of what I could have happen.

Week 5

I began creating the character and rigging him, mostly keeping the same style as the video. I did deviate slightly, and went through different styles, sort of designing the character on-the go and thinking about how I could use him.

After a while I thought that I could use this character as a sausage, because this could lead to some interesting conflicts and stories.

I changed him to more red all over so he was more recognisable as a sausage.

I quickly animated a run cycle to make sure that the rig worked correctly and he would look fine when animated.

Week 6

This week I thought of a story to put the hot dog man in. The obvious one that sticks out is that he is going to be barbecued and he wants to prevent this somehow. Therefore I came up with an idea to have him run away from his fate of being barbecued, using different table top items as an obstacle course. During this time I also thought that mostly hotdogs come in packs of 6, so I could create 5 other hotdog characters with different textures that could add some visual interest to the project. I drafted a quick storyboard.

I textured a few different “characters” with defining characteristics. The frozen hotdog is shivering and cold, the smoker hotdog is slightly cooked, the old hotdog is discoloured from age and asleep, the angry hotdog is a more aggressive red, the distressed hotdog is pale from anxiety, and the protagonist hotdog is just standard.

These designs are also useful for storytelling – there are reasons why only the protagonist hotdog escapes. The angry hotdog is taken by the humans, the frozen hotdog is too cold to do anything but shiver, the old hotdog is asleep, the smoker hotdog is apathetic and technically slowly cooking himself anyway, the distressed hotdog is too overwhelmed to escape.

Week 7

I created the environment for this week – due to everything being planar this was a fairly quick process and my overall theme is very simple in terms of colour scheme so mostly the only difficult parts were the benches and the barbecue, though even these were fairly fast.

For texturing this week I also decided to experiment with different shaders – in my other projects I always used AiStandard Surface shaders for 3D models, but this creates a lot of shadows and effects I didn’t want for this 2D-like animation. Therefore, I experimented using surface shader materials as well as some lambert materials. As transparency does not seem to work on surface shader materials, I used lambert materials for glass objects. The surface shader is better for the style I was going for as it allows for two of the same colour objects to merge when passed over one another, as opposed to looking like a different shade for the “double thickness” version.

Week 8

In this week I began animating my characters to move. I decided to give all the characters idle animations that matched how they looked and their archetypes so as an example I animated the smoker character on 60 frames so that I could loop his animations over z longer time period until the “action” of the scene happens, when the angry hotdog gets taken away. Then once this hotdog gets taken away the other hotdogs react such as the sad hotdog rocking back and forth faster than he was previously, to show that he is now more stressed. After this, the main protagonist hotdog begins to act, leaping out of the jar by first leaping against the side of the jar, and then rolling onto the table on his way to safety. I continued to animate the main protagonist hotdog running away until eventually he jumps off the table into a waiting dogs mouth.

Week 9

I composited during this weeks work, rendering all the scenes that I had created and putting them together in adobe premiere pro and began the process of post-processing. For this I started by putting the image sequences in, then recording suitable audio with some different voices. I decided I would use sims-like audio with almost understandable language but not quite realistic audio – for example having the sad hotdog have quite distorted crying noises. I wanted a fairly cartoonish feel for the animation so I didn’t mind using sound effects that are more stylised – like the bouncing noise the hotdog makes when he jumps on the burger.