Hello everyone, As we wrap up, we thought we would share some of the lessons we learned. Dedication: Our team was incredibly dedicated to the project. Animation is difficult and inevitably there will be crunch time. What got us through was the fact that everyone is incredibly passionate about making this project the best it could […]
It’s official, we’re rendering animated frames!
If you hit play and turn the camera around, you’ll see our first pass of integrating the animation into the scene – specifically, Manny struggling to dance with the Ghanaian doll.
Of course, there’s a reason I say first pass; on first glance, everything looks okay, but then some things start to jump out.
Manny’s feet cut through the floor, and he seems to be standing a little too close to the camera.
Worse yet… Manny sometimes punches her!
We’re working on it. We’re aiming to have the next pass – clip free and with fewer frames – ready by softs.
And then, of course, there’s Agloe, our pre-production package.
We’ve locked in on what we would like our immutable features to be: camera-matched animation, and the sequence of events that occur in the story. The reason we specify those is to ensure that next semester’s team has design pillars it must adhere to, as well as areas where they can deviate to suit their skill sets and creative inclinations.
We’re also in the process of creating the formal script and concept art.
Our character artist is, at this moment, revising and refining the “Young Artist” character we will see in a flashback to the origins of the painting at the center of Agloe’s story. We need the Young Artist to be insecure and desperate to be taken seriously. He needs to be believable, but also unlikeable.
Our character artist presented various designs to the Agloe team. Of them, we agreed that we needed cartoonish while still being close enough to normal proportions to match the rest of the film’s live action content. After some discussion, we settled on the Picasso-inspired outfit on the left with the body shape on the far right.
From there, our character artist brought up an important point: We want to provide next semesters team with models, but won’t be casting the live action actors. How do we match a pre-made model with a yet-established real man? The answer: Make feature trademark aspects of his outfit (glasses or a hat) and then offer customize-able skin and hair.
Some hair is based on stereotypes, some on our faculty members, but hopefully the diversity of options will help next semester’s team feel like they have options.
For both Melody of Life and Agloe, it really feels like it’s all coming together. We can’t wait to show you what we make!
