Animation 2B: Sem 2, Week 1-5

 Week 1

At the start of the project, I struggled quite a lot. Deciding on an idea that wasn’t too much work for the amount of time we have for it proved to be quite challenging. Because of this, I went through about five short film ideas before settling on the current one.

The very first idea featured a grumpy cat and a cat-hating woman. I thought that having a pair of characters like this would be quite interesting to work with however I struggled coming up with a plot that I liked so the idea got scrapped.

My second idea focused on two young cats. Unlike the previous idea, I came up with a plot that I was quite satisfied with. The short would follow the two cat characters as they tried to find a pretty bug in order to win a bug competition. They would search under rocks, up in the trees and even underground however none of the bugs were good enough for them. Except one. Near the end of the short, the two cats would find a gorgeous bug however, a hungry frog got to it before they could capture it.  I even managed to doodle some cats and come up with rough designs for the characters. I wanted to make sure that the two characters could be told apart from each other so I made one cat short and fluffy while the other was was tall and had large ears.

Although I liked the idea, I ended up scrapping it after realising that I wouldn't be able to make it in a single semester without cutting out a lot of scenes and simplifying the visuals by a lot.

In my next idea, I continued experimenting with anthropomorphic characters. This time I thought about focusing on two hairdressers who were also dogs. The plot would focus on the characters' rivalry. They had been given the task of creating some mannequin displays so that their customers had a better idea of what they're capable of. However, it all goes wrong when they start trying to sabotage each other. At the end of the short, they would be fired for destroying the salon during their "battle". I was quite passionate about this idea so I came up with the character designs and even started building a 3D model of the salon in Blender.

However, I scrapped this idea for similar reasons as the previous one. I realised that I wouldn't be able to make it in this amount of time without having to cut out a lot. Alongside this, I started losing interest in the characters.

My fourth idea went back to anthropomorphic cat characters however the plot was completely different. Instead of a bug contest, it would focus on a young cat trying to steal a fish bun from a market stall. However, he would have to be careful to avoid getting caught by the vendor.

My reason for scrapping this idea was that I simply didn't like it that much. I thought that the idea was okay but it wasn't something that I wanted to make right now. However, I still got some rough designs done for the two characters. I did two different designs for the vendor and one for the young cat. The young cat's design was inspired by the tall cat character in my 2nd idea.

Finally, I decided on an idea for the short film. For the main character, I decided to use the fluffy cat from an earlier idea. I really liked his design and didn't want it to go to waste however I did remove some things to make him easier to animate. For the 2nd character, I decided to go with a dragonfly. As for the plot, I tried to keep it simple. It can be summarised as a cat becoming friends with a bug and then being upset when he realises that playtime is over and it's time to go home. 

After deciding on the characters, I started working on a very rough storyboard.

Once I was done with that, I went back and sketched out some scenes in a bit more detail alongside doing a couple of layer plans.

By this point, I had a good idea of what I wanted the setting to look like so I started working on creating it. I really wanted to have grass swaying in the wind as I felt that it made the whole setting appear much more alive. However, it would take me a very long time if I tried to animate it frame-by-frame in 2D so I turned to Blender. 

I started out with a basic plane mesh. After that, I scaled it up and edited it into the shape of a hill. Then I simply had to add a particle emitter to the mesh, tweak the settings a bit to make the particles look like grass blades and then animate it swaying by using the wind and turbulence force fields. Next, I focused on making a texture for the mesh. I went through about 3 textures before I got my final version. The previous textures weren't bad but the colours were too dark and they weren't detailed enough for my liking.

Afterwards, I quickly made the tree trunk at the top of the hill. I started out with the basic cylinder mesh and edited it into a tree-like shape in edit mode. The texture for it was a little more challenging to do. I did a few versions but they turned out too dark or detailed. This made the object stand out too much and made it obvious that it was a 3D object. After playing around with different layer effects I managed to create the texture below. It's far from perfect however I think it looks a lot better than my previous attempts.

Next, I began creating the 2D assets I would be using for the intro and as background elements in the main scene. 

After this, I imported the 2D files into the 3D environment. To create some sense of depth I tried to avoid placing the layers too close together. Alongside this, I rotated all the layers as they looked a bit off in the camera view. I still haven't created a texture for the bushes so I'm just using the tree foliage texture for it but it will be replaced in the near future.

At this point, I started working on the intro shot. I imported all of the 2D drawings I did into Blender and then animated the pan by simply moving the camera. Although I could have achieved a similar effect using something like After Effects, I think that the process was a lot quicker this way.

However, I decided to scrap this intro not long after I finished it. It went on for far too long and I don't think it did a very good job in setting the scene. Due to this, I had to go back and rethink the intro. In the end, I came up with the current intro. I feel that this intro is much better at setting the scene alongside letting me introduce one of the main characters very quickly. Plus this is also a chance for me to show off the swaying grass that I spent time working on. 

The 2D animation was done in Clip Studio Paint and then imported into Blender.

Week 2

In week 2 I continued working on the animatic and made a rough animation of the 2nd scene in the short film. Overall I am super happy with how it came out.

Week 3

In week 3 I continued working on the animatic. I also animated the mother cat character for one of the scenes. Her design was based on one of the vendor designs that I made in week 1.

Week 4

After last week's discussion, I ended up changing a few scenes in the animatic. The feedback I got during the tutorial was very useful so I tried to apply the suggestions I got. For example, during the meeting, it was noted that the ending of my previous animatic seemed a bit abrupt so I tried to work on that.

Week 5 (+ reading week)

Unfortunately, I didn't make as much progress as I was hoping to in these last two weeks. During week 5 I encountered art block so I only got some super rough animation sketches done. Then during reading week, I was mostly focused on an upcoming group presentation and I also ended up becoming a bit ill. I'm planning to make up for that in week 6 and hopefully, also get some work for the short film done during the 10x10x20 project.

The music in the animatic is also a bit messed up near the end but I will be editing that later.