Week 3

Following Up

We closed last week with three important questions from Chris Klug. Here were the answers we came up with:

• We chose our narrator as Sirena’s daughter. This was a new idea suggested by Chris and most of us agreed to go with the her being the narrator.
• We chose our geographical location as Tahiti, as we really liked the Tahiti islands and wanted to incorporate it as part of our environment. We were particularly inspired by Paul Gauguin’s paintings from Tahiti.
• We decided to keep the tone uplifting for the transformation sequence; Sirena is drowning in the beginning, so the transformation save her life and gives her joy in the end.

Though we were still fuzzy on the beginning and end, we knew for sure the transformation would be a part of the story so we got to thinking about its logistics. We came up with three different versions of visualizing the transformation:

• Using particles or a glowing effect to begin the transformation scene. Particles would also help us hide the body.
• Use sound effects and music, going from intense and suspenseful to hopeful and uplifting.
• Use a fish school swimming around the body and cover the legs as the transformation begins.

Prepping the Pre-Production

During this week we also presented all the pitches for the pre-production package to the faculty. We had prepared five pitches which were as follows:

• Rain Dance

• Dreamcatcher

• Dragon

• The Package

• Stage Fright

After our meeting with the faculty, we decided to go with The Package, a story developed by our writer, Kate Busatto. The Package is the story of two pen pals living in two different cities— Pittsburgh and Doha. We were especially fond of this pitch as we liked how it will give the next animation team an opportunity to explore two different cultures and represent them in the form of an animated short.

On Brand

Muhammad also worked on poster design for our branding, as we had our internal review for the concept for the poster.

He and Kristy also worked on logo design, where they experimented with different designs, color schemes, and text fonts for the logo.

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Hair and (Physical) Makeup

Apart from this, we made a lot of progress this week as Muhammad worked on ncloth simulation and how it can be linked to the character rig.

Kristy worked on creating a hair braid simulation in Maya using nhair and xgen. She then started working on learning about creating hair simulation for underwater sequences.

Kevin continued working on creating effects and understanding fluid simulation in Maya. For a demo he created a shattering effect in Houdini. He also experimented in simulating and rendering out the ocean created by him in Houdini using Houdini’s fluid system.

Niharika researched how to set up cameras in Maya and how they can be used to create the same effects and shots as animated film cameras. She also did research on animating a fish in Maya and studied about fish movements. She also did a simulation of fish school.

She also tried using blendshapes to morph a cube into a sphere. This was important as we wanted to see how this technique would work for morphing, which would help us decide whether we should use blendshapes for morphing the girl into a mermaid.

By the end of this week, we had tried out several new and different techniques. Our big focus, though, was preparing for our Quarter-Semester presentations on Monday. Onward!