For this week we looked at different work from Lucas Zanotto, an artist who uses simple geometric models animated with fairly basic motion paths in a way in which he creates faces out of the simple models at parts of the animation. I like this style as he is able to create a very stylistically pleasing animation in spite of the simplicity of his overall videos.

We worked in class to recreate an animation similar to this. Using the animation graph editor was useful to ensure that different animated parts matched – for example animating the height curves of the eyes and the ball to match each other so when the ball dropped in height, the eyes dropped with them. Playing with how sharp the curves were on the Y axis was interesting to try and get a good balance of showing the ball dropping and “hopping” back up, trying to make it not look jarring whilst still showing that it was falling off and going back onto the cylinders on the floor. Playing with the rotation animation curve of the eyes was also useful to attempt to get an effect that the eyes would start rolling slowly and then when the ball hits the ground, the force makes the eyes roll even faster. In the future it would maybe be better to show the eyes impacted by this force even further, possibly bouncing off the surface of the sphere before landing again.

For this week we presented our ideas for our experimental animation projects that we would be beginning to make. My presentation was on my Wild West themed project. It was useful to gain feedback for this project and think about ways I could better optimise the project. I modified my project idea, instead of it being a sheriff that the entering cowboy fights, I thought that a living cactus could make the project a lot more interesting and different, as well as giving me avenues to show off my skills in creating and animating the cactus character. The style would lean more towards comedic and light-hearted with this updated story, as I was intending on making more of a serious animation before.

For this week we worked on compositing – matching animation with sound effects to fit the animation. I used the pre-made animation as I wasn’t able to render my personal “Useless Box” scene, and I would rather use a rendered scene than my playblasted one. To create this, we used Adobe Premier Pro, a software I have used in the past and know the basics of. Trimming audio as well as modifying the volume, editing some audio to play backwards, as well as matching audio carefully to fit with the animation happening in the scene were tasks I completed to make sure that the audio and the animation went together well.

For this week, we focused on camera movements. The chase scene provided with the man kicking the other man in the back seemed to me to fit a 360 degree rotation around the moment when the man’s foot makes contact with the other man’s back.

Following the tutorial from Dom to make an object collide with another and cause the struck object to break and shatter into pieces allowed me to simulate this animation which could potentially have usage in my collaborative unit piece – as showing an object shattering into pieces is a great way to symbolise something in someone’s life being destroyed – such as a town is destroyed for example, showing a building shatter into pieces is a good way to show this without showing the actual events that caused the town to be destroyed.

For this week, we also animated the “Useless Box”, a device which detects when a human has moved a switch and moves it back to where it began. I animated a head inside the box which stretches its neck and pushes the lever back to it’s original position with its head. The animation loops, with the box closing and returning to it’s original position, which with the lever also being pushed back to the place it started in means that the last frame is the same as the first.

For my Wild Western project, I wanted to make a fairly standard iconic sandy Western environment. Initially I wanted a full town as the setting for my project such as the one below.

However, instead I thought that maybe having the two fight near a water source could be better, as changing the antagonist to a cactus means that fighting over water makes a lot more sense than in a town.

This kind of environment works well for me, as I can create a fairly stylised well/water source with the cactus nearby, have the cowboy go to get water, and then have the cactus attack him, possibly afterwards revealing the motive as being that the cactus wants the water all for itself.

For this week the task was to import animations into Unity, as well as setup a scene with a first person perspective and controls for movement around the scene. Importing existing modules for the first person code was useful (as creating this myself would probably be too challenging), and using the process to loop the animations on the boxes and the grabbing device with Unity allowed for a more dynamic scene.

Thinking about how I could incorporate this into my work was a consideration, as in the future working in projects with games as the final product could be interesting. Knowing how this process works in Unreal and being more skilled in understanding how I can move from Maya into Unreal can help me to better work with people who work in Unreal as I can understand their limitations as well as their processes.

Intro

The name of my project is “Showdown” and it will be a Wild West style scene, with a duel between an outsider and the town sheriff.

Narrative

The narrative structure begins with a man dressed in dark clothes entering a wild-western town riding on his horse, with a gun on his hip. He rides past the county jail. The scene then cuts to the town saloon, and the sheriff exits, with a shot to zoom in on his badge to let the audience know he is the sheriff. The townspeople shut their windows and close their doors in anticipation of the duel. The sheriff faces the outsider, and they get ready to draw their guns. In the final shot, the outsider reaches for his gun, and the story ends.

Theme

The theme overall is Wild West, with a very popular style of shot. To further research this, looking at films like “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”, “High Noon”, and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” would be useful, especially considering the different camera shots and how villainous and heroic characters are framed.

Mechanics

Overall there would be several characters but I think that the townsperson, the sheriff and the outsider can all be variants of the same model, only wearing different clothing and different colours. These characters I would rather model and rig myself. The horse I think would be easier if I can find a rig online that fits stylistically with the other models, as it would be very difficult to rig it myself. Props would mostly be the town itself as well as the character’s guns. These buildings will not take too much time to model.

What’s next?

Gathering the assets, I could probably easily find assets for a Wild-Western town fairly easily, and I have found a rig for a basic horse though I am not sure how up to date it is.