For my personal development project this semester, I opted to help out on a final year project. I chose Animation as it was a field that I wanted to develop my skills further in and I believe it's always a useful skill to develop. I was assigned to help out Caitlin Collins, a final year doing a solo project. Her animated short revolves around Irish heritage, magic, and history. It involves a curious female character who is enchanted by a floating shamrock which leads her on a journey. I met up with Caitlin shortly after being assigned to help her and she described the shot list she required help on.
The gist of the shot list she provided was that the character would begin looking up a ladder cautiously. They then proceed to climb the ladder and the pace picks up gradually. Once finished they hoist them self up to a platform where they see the shamrock float into a tree-house. The door opens slowly as the character watches. There were some framing and camera angles/movement notes attached also.
Caitlin sent me the rigged character and the environment shortly thereafter. In order to get used to the rig and controls I began to play around with the character - putting her in some poses. I scaled the rig to match the environment and proceeded from there. At this stage the skin weights and rig controls hadn't been fully completed so I made the best with what I had. Below are some screenshots:
Once I had got my bearings with the controls and rig, I started to make a previs to show Caitlin. I began by placing the character in the appropriate places and framed the camera to match Caitlin's requirements. I estimated some rough timing to show to her also. I wanted to get a rhythm where the pacing speeds up in the middle as we follow the character up the ladder, curious to find out what's in store. Then as we reach the top, I wanted to gradually mellow out the pacing to allow the audience to see the payoff.
Caitlin liked the shots and suggested some edits to the camera distance and speed of certain shots. I took note pf her changes and proceeded to start on the actual animation. It was at this point when she sent me the updated character with fixed skin weights and rig controls.
I started the animation in a shot-by-shot progression. I started off the majority of shots by looking at some reference footage and studying them. I used a pose-to-pose technique with stepped preview to get the timing right before proceeding onto refining the details and keyframing. I tried to get the movement to be cautious and curious at first. Then as it progressed I wanted her to move faster and with more confidence. It took quite some time and editing to get the finished product. It was a little tricky at times trying to achieve convincing movement with the finger controls. There was no blink or facial controls which was a shame as it could have maybe made the character look more lifelike. I presented the final shots to Caitlin and she seemed happy with the result.
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| Final Shot |
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| Climbing onto the Treehouse Platform |
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| Possible Extra Climbing Shot I suggested |
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| Climbing Shot |
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| Top-Down Shot |
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| Establishing Shot |
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| Long Shot |
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