Modeling

This week I finished another character model the main human in our script.

I firstly tried to directly make a basic human body in Makehuman because I can quickly get a basic model which has a perfect line cover. Then I could use sculpting tools on Maya and Zbrush to fix the appearance that fits our purpose well. The reason I chose fixing rather than modeling from a ball was that our time limit, this saved a lot of efficiency.

But I ignored one thing that we didn’t draw a character set-up diagram I just had a rough direction of this role which was lack of accuracy. This was very ineffective in terms of lack of purpose in my later sculpting work. So I told Wanxuan Liu to draw a basic character concept drawing to lead my modeling work. Then I got this picture and some other references which fit us pretty much.

Then thins became more easier I started to fix the appearance according to our concept drawing.

Then I started to build the beard and hair, I dropped the body into Zbrush and created a basic ball on the back head area. And mirror moving the ball to adapt the head structure. When I had a suitable shape I began to sculpt the direction of the hair and made it more toon style. So the sculpting of the hair concentrated only on the shaping of the block rather than on the sculpting of the hair strands. Same method used on the beard.

Finally I gave it to Guanze Wu who is our rigger too. He would start to rig the character qucikly.

Storyboard

Wanxuan Liu drew a very first storyboard for us. And our team met to discuss of that after Wednesday’s class, we thought there were too many too many fine close-ups, and the rhythm was not very good. So we began to use mobile phone to quick capture some footage to guide layout work. After that we re-edited the whole storyboard with some reference shots from other’s work.

And after discussion our team consensus reached, we need to add more long shot in the first time we were limited by the graphic effects like 2D animation. But if we constructed the shot like 2D animation we would lost so many advantages of 3D animation like some complex motion shots. So the re-edited version would become our final storyboard.

Modeling

This week I mainly focused on the robot which is one of our main character in the script modeling.

I firstly quickly set a basic geometry to show the silhouette of this character. According to our concept this robot mainly used in house, so I tried to make it more smoother of the outline to make it likes more friendly.

But I thought there are so many ball elements in the robot . So I did some researches on art station. I thought it’s better to removal of the initial spherical design at the bottom and instead of a thruster. Choosing this could allows us to give the animation more interesting and varied. Besides the bottom area was empty so I must add more elements on the head, so I add 2 mechanical ears on it.

Finally I add more mechanical constructions like covering plates on the head and behind the body, and change the hand constructions into mechanical human-hand. And I got the final version and gave it to Guanze Wu to rig it.

Rendering Effects

Although our group all had some experience in animation, none of us had ever worked on a cel shading project. So Guanze Wu and I charge in rendering process, we talked about the frame‘s artistic effects and light and shadow effects. We did a lot researches like <The witness> in <Love, Death and Robots> and <The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild>.

After discussing I chose a illustration as our final reference because of its wonderful lighting and texture effects we wanted to add more geometry lines on the shader.

Team members:

Zhengzhong Liang, Wanxuan Liu, Ziyin Wang, Guanze Wu, Yuehui Chen.

Project: Shut Down (Tentative)

The project is to make a cel shading near-future sci-fi animation short film.

Cel shading is a type of NPR (Non-photorealistic rendering), which can be also called toon shading. It uses less shading color instead of a shade gradient or tints and shades in 3D production to flatten the animation graphics and simulate the feeling of 2D animation.

Story draft: 

In a near-future, robot is widely used in people’s daily life. A computer virus explosion lead to a chaotic, which strains the relationship between the oversensitive protagonist and his suspected robot. A misunderstanding drives the protagonist to fight with his suspected robot, and died accidentally in this fighting. The story finally shows that the robot is not affected by the virus at all. 

Key Words: Near-future, Computer Virus, Absurd Story

Task Assignment(Recently):

The process of this project may covers: Storyboard, Modeling, Texturing, Rigging, Animation, Lighting and Rendering, Composite and Editing. This task assignment is for reference only, which will be adjusted later basing on the progress rate and other requests.

Wanxuan Liu： Storyboard, Editing, Visual effects

Ziyin Wang： Layout, Animation, Composite

Zhengzhong Liang： Modeling, Texturing, Rigging, Lighting and Rendering,

Guanze Wu： Modeling, Texturing, Rigging, Lighting and Rendering

Yuehui Chen: Texture, Shading, Fine Art Design

（Anyway we are a team and we are all relatively experienced in producing short animation films, so our duties are not settled and we are all available to work when anyone needs help.）

Muarl link:

https://app.mural.co/t/shutdown5703/m/shutdown5703/1644249345271/5bc2a4b11e8a42f66b2c196938550246f5c76006?sender=u2dc2f4b082a2cd1612801072

References & Mood Boards & Sketches:

Ideas:

We decide to breakdown the story into three parts: Background and Attempt, Chasing and Fighting, Result.

Background and Attempt: We decide to use voiceover like TV news to release the message of computer virus explosion. We also decide to use dream sequence to show protagonist’s horrible imaginations after he heard the news, which strengthens his attempt to get away from his robot or even try to kill it.

Chasing and Fighting: This part can be the most important part of this story. How to design the interactions among character, robot and props in the scene, and how to exaggerate the dramatic relationship between character and robot is still under discussion.  

Result: We decide to end this story with an absurd ending. The character died because of the misunderstanding.  

Here is the camera sequencer practice I did. Layout is pretty useful for project because it could provide solutions which will lead the whole process carry on and not affect progress. And in which way the story will be told.

• Continuity editing – Continuous shots to maintain consistency, so that the audience does not feel the editing.
• Move with the motion of the characters to create the sense of motion to the audience.
• Use camera tilt, pan, track to control the camera movement.

Layout is very essential process for a whole project, so in our video production we would quickly set up it to lead animation work and modeling work including the structure of narrative and frame composition and edit rhythm. Let’s see how we do it.

Make a Team

First of all, Wanxuan Liu asked me to make a cel-shading project like <Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse>. I’m also a huge fan of it, so we quickly decide to from a team of makeing a cel-shading video. Because cel-shading is a extremely new and challenging pipeline of animation production. So except us our team urgently needs experienced people who are familiar with 3D animation and 2D effects. Guanze Wu he is suitable for this, he is experienced enough and full of responsibility he will be in charge of modeling, rigging , shading and rendering with me. Furthermore we also invite Ziyin Wang to join us, he is a very good animator he will be in charge of animating. Unfortunatly we haven’t a 2D animation student to paint some 2D effects, we will continue work on it.

Project

Our project is to make a cel shading near-future sci-fi animation short film. Cel shading is a type of non-PBR rendering, which can be also called toon shading. It uses less shading color instead of a shade gradient or tints and shades in 3D production to flatten the animation graphics and simulate the feeling of 2D animation.

This week our group had several meetings discussing about our story draft and tasks for each team member. Everyone in our team wrote a short story based on the near-future scifi background. We discuss each story and finally choose one as our story draft. We then redesigned part of this story and then polished the logic and plot inside of it.

In brief, our story is: In a near-future, robot is widely used in people’s daily life. A computer virus explosion lead to a chaotic, which strained the relationship between the oversensitive protagonist and his suspected robot. A misunderstanding drives the protagonist to fight with his suspected robot, and died accidentally in this fighting. The story finally shows that the robot is not affected by the virus at all.

My responsibilities

In this project I will mainly be in charge in modeling, shading and rendering.

And I think our team is very reasonable of this project especially for this rarely done video.