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Animation 2

Diversity and Inclusivity Project

OUTLINE

  1. Briefing: requirements and description.

  2. Synopsis

  3. Research

  4. Moodboard references: project, colour, and environment references.

  5. Character Design ideas: Sketches-Illustrator

  6. Zbrush first steps 

  7. Zbrush Sculpting

  8. Zbrush Retopology: Zremesh, Decimation master.

  9. Blender: UV Wrap, texture paint, rigging.

  10. Character turnable video

  11. Environment

  12. Poster

 

​2 TERM ASSESSMENT

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13. Compositing animation scenes idea

14. Script

15. Storyboard draft-sketches

16. Notes-Ideas

17. Storyboard

18. Production Schedule

19. Production:

  • Lips Sync

  • Animation principles: Breakdowns

  • Assets

  • Lighting

  • VFX

  • Sound

20. Final Animation Project

21. References

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1.Briefing

As the project's main requirement, I have to search for an idea based on the Diversity and Inclusivity aspect. Then, I have decided to develop a project for High Sensitive persons.

Highly Sensitive Person.
 

  • Highly Sensitive Person, or HSP, is a term coined by psychologist Elaine Aron. According to Aron’s theory, HSPs are a subset of the population high in a personality trait known as sensory-processing sensitivity, or SPS. Those with high levels of SPS display increased emotional sensitivity, stronger reactivity to both external and internal stimuli—pain, hunger, light, and noise, and complex inner life.

  • The concept of high sensitivity has gained traction in the years since Aron conceived of it, particularly as more and more people began to self-identify as highly sensitive. Overall, about 15 to 20 percent of the population is thought to be highly sensitive.

  • HSPs are thought to be more disturbed than others by violence, tension, or feelings of being overwhelmed. They may, as a result, make concerted efforts to avoid situations in which such things are likely to occur. On the more optimistic end of the trait, high sensitivity is linked to higher levels of creativity, more prosperous personal relationships, and a greater appreciation for beauty.

  • Psychologists consider HSP as the actual superpower human on Earth because their high sensibility transmits emotions, intuition, empathy, motivation to others. 

  • What is the character?

The first concept that I have thought of is an androgynous being, half-human half robot. But if it finally does not work, I will base the project on a human character, since these types of emotions are only possessed by human beings.

  • What’s their name and what do they look like?

I decided to name his Skye because the name refers to the immensity of the sky and space.

  • What is the character’s dominant trait?

The main trait of my character is his androgynous appeal. He shines because the energy from the neuro system transports the energy. 
 

*Update: As I have to pay for the plugins I wanted to use, I have decided to change the character idea project. 

2.Synopsis

Skye is an HSP child. A V.O. wakes up from his dreams and encourages him to travel for these emotions to know how they work and how they make him feel. He must learn to manage them every day. 

3.Research

4. Moodboard 
 

  • Project references: Energy, emotions, sparks, connections, thoughts.

  • Pastel Colour references for character and environment.

I get ideas for my projects by listening to music in most cases.
One afternoon I listened to Stephen Moccio pianist, while making cotton candy at home, and my imagination kicked into gear without expecting it. I remember that a small cloud of cotton candy escaped from the machine and flew through my kitchen, and that's when I had the idea for the project. The phone rang, and my nephew was on the other end smiling at me.
Le Jardin of Monsenior Monet - Stephen Moccio piano song played on my Spotify, and all the projects came to life. Cotton Candy environment, My nephew will be finally my character, and that song would be the main audio for the final Animation.

  • Environment references

5. Character design.

First Character Design Idea 

Below I show the first idea I had for the project and the main character. A child of about 8-10 years a little androgynous. 
The idea was to show how the emotions, thoughts, and neurons of a High Sensitive Person reacted to certain situations and stimuli.
I intended to use specific Red Giant plugins to generate electrical shocks and vibrate neurons throughout the character's body, but unfortunately, these plugins are out of my league so I discard the original idea.

2nd Character design references idea

PERSONALITY: Skye is a puppet boy about 3-4 years old. Cheerful and somewhat rambunctious like any child of his age. He has much imagination; he loves to jump and imagine flying with a balloon.

ANATOMY-STYLE-MOOD: I found this cartoon character reaching out online; he looks similar to the idea and personality that I thought for my character. Slim anatomy, big eyes, round face like little children have, and mixing it with the photos of my nephew; I can get my final character.

REFRENCES CHARACTER DESIGN and facila expression.png

Character Design sketching in Illustrator

I have never drawn before, but I do Graphic Design, so I opened my Illustrator again to design a draft of my character in different poses and one color scheme similar to the idea. 
The overall construction will make sure the base shape stays strong and will determine the proportions and I finally added some details like bottoms to the pajama.

6. Zbrush first steps

I designed a first character idea in Zbrush to learn how the software works.  The character looks weird; however, it´s just experimentation.

7. Zbrush Sculpting.

This is the second design idea of Skye, in cartoon style. The character in this style looks and fits better with my Animation idea. I used the Dynamesh shapes to sculpt the whole character to learn how this software's brushes and tools work.

The body was sculpted with different dynamesh shapes like squares and cylinders, and then I did a merge down to merge everything, trying always to keep the minimum points in the mesh.

Sculpting the hands was easy duplicating the same shape, using brushes and playing the scales and positions.

I tried creating the hair of Skye with the fiber mesh of Zbrush. I changed the color; I increased the max fibers; the more number of threads, the more control of the hair. I increased the length and the gravity of the fibers and adjusted the width profile to control the fiber wave. As a result, it was not my desired final. I decided to sculpt the hair, too, doing a mask and using the hairbrushes.

8. Rotopology: Zremesh, Decimation Master.

To get a low topology in character, I applied the decimated master plugging and a  Zremesh to all subtools to get the minimum points and polys to export to Blender and Maya. 

Zremesh: before-after

Decimation Master: before-after

Retopology: Maya

9. Blender: UV Wrap, modeling eyes, texture paint, and Rigging.

The whole character was still a high poly object; then, I had to export file by file the entire body and merge all the pieces. To prepare the surface to be textured, I apply the UV wrap.

Modeling, unwrap, and texture painting, eyes, eyelids, and hair.
I was trying out different color textures on the character to see which one I liked best and which would fit in with the color tone of the environment and the warm lights in the scene. My character will look like a puppet, so the brown skin tone will be the basic color and I will add a different color tone for rosy cheeks, lips, and eyebrows. I finally decided to use a pastel color texture and possibly I will modify it depending on the scene and the direction of its lights.

The texture paint made all my expectations. The basic color looks like a puppet, the rosy cheeks, and the green pupil eyes look natural, and as a whole, all of the colors match with the idea.

And finally, the rigging. Hands were the most complicated to do. Because of that, I had to repeat the rig around 3-4 times until I moved everything properly.

The character is wearing a pajama and house slippers because he is sleeping when the story begins, so the details are simple, buttons and slipper closures. The color texture of both was added with a base color respecting the color tone chosen for him.

10. Character Turntable Video

11. Environment

This summer I saw a tutorial on youtube about GIS addons to capture plans of the shapes of buildings in a (real) city and generate it in a 3D environment. 

This is the final result of the 3D environment I got. I added the colors in a random way, pinks, pastel blues, and warm lights. I liked pretty much the final result so I decided to use the color and this3D environment as the base of my Animation.

The basic idea of ​​the scene for this presentation was to capture a frame when Skye grabs onto the balloon to start flying through his brain.
I used HDRI images for the sky, the pink reflects in the cloud match with the idea of a cotton candy environment colors. I have used Sunlight and two-point lights for the lighting of the scene to get shadows on the floor and get a bit clear the face of the character.

As part of the scenes, I am designing random objects that represent the neural system, emotions, and thoughts of my character. I show below the Skye Neuro System design process and the Empathic Tatum object. Sculpting in Zbrush and Unwrap and texture paint in Blender. 
I have in mind to represent with other objects feelings of sadness, fear and the three goddesses of creativity: painting, writing and sculpture.

12. POSTER

2 TERM COURSEWORK

13.COMPOSITING ANIMATION SCENES IDEA

  • Skye sleeps in the Pink Stone Valley.

  • He listens to a voice and wakes up.

  • He flies between valleys with a balloon.

  • Design a different valley for each concept: 

  • Creativity-music-dance-painter.

  • Neuro system and emotions.

  • Empathic feelings.

  • High loud, scary sensations and depression.

  • Intuition sense.

  • Acceptance of reality and condition.

14. SCRIPT

15. STORYBOARD DRAFT -SKETCHES

Below I show the first ideas I had for the story of the project. They are simple sketches made in a notebook, but they helped me to direct the final storyboard.

16.NOTES-IDEAS

I Wrote down ideas on my phone and in my notebook about ideas for the storyboard, the script and the different scenes of the story. I wanted to mention them and upload some screenshots. When I saw or had an interesting idea, I wrote it down to think if it could fit between them and be able to make a final decision about the scenes. (They are in the Spanish language).

15. STORYBOARD

I don't know how to draw well, and I made my storyboards using Illustrator. However, following the tutor's idea in class, I have made screenshots of the scenes with the previous scenes before renders. No lights or effects appear, and only the necessary action is shown.
In all the storyboards, I make a distinction in the three most important points:
-Visual: movement of the camera, lighting and the purpose of the scene.
-Sound: diegetic or not and other sounds effects to capture the attention of the audience
-Tx Edit: the transitions used between scenes.

16. PRODUCTION SCHELDULE

In the infographic below, I show the distribution of the project's production according to the days between the 1Term and the 2Term deadline. I usually make small layouts of the production schedule with an object representative of the animation project I'm working on. In that case, I used the Skye balloon.

17.PRODUCTION

  • LIPS SYNC

I wanted to focus my Animation project on what I learned this year in class, primarily the lips sync using the shape keys, although I have also used animation principles in some other scenes. As I show below, I first learned how shape keys work in Zbrush and later worked on them in Blender, where I have done 90% of the production.
I want to mention what I explained earlier in the character design point. My character is a puppet child, so his movements are more rigid than a human being, and I wanted to respect the idea of the puppet until the end; however, in addition to the lips Sync, the facial expressions that I used are much softer for not generate robotic movements, but closer to human ones.

  • ANIMATION PRINCIPLES

As many animation companies are asking for showreels with breakdown samples, I have made a small video with the breakdowns of the character animations for the project. I show the breakdowns of a walking cycle, jumps, and an arrival in it. You can appreciate the animation principles of anticipation, push, squash and stretch, impact, pose to pose, timing in them...

Below, I show some captures of the graphic editor for the smooth balloon's flight. The linear interpolation between keyframes made the movement smooth. However, as Skye is a puppet, I tried to respect that rigid idea of movement from the beginning to the end of the animations. I used to get the animation a jump image reference..

  • ASSETS

Mountains landscape: As I showed in term 1 I used a specific addon to create the environment of my animation. The first scene focuses on a valley of pink and beige stones giving a warm look at the beginning of the animation. I created a landscape of mountains that I have used in almost all the scenes to do this. The main idea with this landscape was to generate depth and perspective.

HDRI: I got the animation backgrounds using the 2K resources on HDRI-haven. Skye wakes up in one valley and runs through the day's rest. To show the different solar times in the animation, I used additional images to create the sensation of sunrise, sunset and night.

Balloon: I created a balloon in Zbrush as Skye´s object that would be used to fly between the different valleys. I finished it in Blender.

MUSES OF THE ART VALLEY: HSP people have highly developed senses of creativity, especially in painting, music and dance. I wanted to represent this reality in the Valley of the Muses scene. I used a Zbrush poly-model that I modified with a mask to create a hair bun similar to statues of Greek and Roman goddesses.

NEURONS AND THE NEURO SYSTEM: I designed a random object in Zbrush that would act as the neural system capable of controlling the emotions of a human being. I textured it and rigged it in Blender so I could articulate it. The main idea is for Skye to learn to dance and fly along with her emotions to control her depressive states caused by high sensitivity. To represent the emotions, I followed a tutorial on youtube to create the Dragon Ball cloud.

THE EMPATHIC FEELINGS IN THE MERCURY SEA VALLEY: I designed some trumpet of death mushroom-like objects in Zbrush that I would use for a different scene but ultimately changed because they fit more with my idea of Mercury Sea Valley. I textured them in Blender and added blue lighting to simulate the colours of the sea at sunset, and I generated the sea in Blender too.

THE VALLEY OF HIGH NOISES: In this scene, I focused mainly on the lighting that I will mention later. HSPs have to be especially careful with loud noises because it generates feelings of discomfort and even fear. The circular sphere is broken on purpose and turns senselessly from one side to the other, generating an unpleasant sound representing the emotion that sensation causes in the HSP. I later added a visual effect to create the lightning and a storm lightning sound effect to give more realism.

THE INTUITION SENSE VALLEY: In this scene, I wanted to represent the sense of intuition that is also highly developed in HSPs. Spheres and cylinders are consciously very large for that very reason.

THE MOON VALLEY: This is the last scene of the animation and the main intention was to represent Skye realizing how he is and how he feels. His reaction is very positive as well as brave. To represent acceptance I used two phrases from my favourite poem, Invictus by Willian Henley. A song to freedom and human resistance in the most difficult moments of existence: "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul". I added a sphere with the texture moon.

  • LIGHTING

The main idea of the animation was to show a journey between sunrise and sunset. I have used different types of lights, from the sun to generate atmospheric light with warm tones, volumetric light assets, points of light in specific areas to create shadows, and issues of light of colours to create a dramatic atmosphere in other scenes.

This was the initial ambient light of the scene, so to solve that problem I added a light in warm tones that will also generate shadows of the objects that participated in the scene.

 I got this result. As you can see, the scene already had shadows. I modified the position of the light later, so it looks like the light comes from behind, where the sun appears in the HDRI images.

In the scene below, I changed the HDRI background to a darker one that would fit within the environment I wanted to show. I also positioned different points of red light to create a dramatic atmosphere. Then,  the scene would focus on the mountain and the broken sphere spinning randomly. I added some red points of light inside the sphere to focus on it.

To achieve an evening scene, I positioned different points of blue light with different intensities that matched the colours of the objects and generated reflections in the water.

In this scene, Skye's conscience speech generates a solid ambient light. I consciously believe in this way because of the importance of the script phrases; however, the sunset is still there. I had to work harder on the shadows because the light cast on certain landscape parts wasn't very realistic. To get more realistic shadows from Skye's flight with the balloon and the projection of light on the mountains on the left, I made shape layers in After Effects and modified the opacity. I then added cloud assets to develop a haze environment.

In the final scene of the moon, I wanted to create a night environment > I only used two points of light, one with much intensity behind the moon to generate a glow and the other in front of it to mark the silhouette of Skye from the behind position of the camera.

  • VFX: Particules System, clouds and lightning storm

Use the After Effects Particles System II plugin to generate a trail of particles following a youtube tutorial. same for the lighting storm and I also added cloud assets to generate a misty environment in some scenes.

  • SOUND

One of my favourite piano composers in recent years is Stephan Moccio. I was listening to one of his compositions when the idea for this animation came in. The musical composition used as background is called "le Jardin de Monsieur Monet".
I used the online generator voice MURF for the "consciousness voice" and Skye's voice; after that, I modified the voice in Audition using the plunging of the delay and Eco. Also, I looked for some lighting storm sounds on youtube.

20. FINAL ANIMATION

Walking Cycles references: https://anishkrishan.wordpress.com/2014/05/01/simple-walk-cycle/

HDRI backgrounds: https://polyhaven.com/hdris/skies

Moon texture: https://www.solarsystemscope.com/textures/

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