My next film is a little more involved than my usual ones. I have a script, which is unusual for me, as my normal process is to model what I want for a few days and then figure out the film from the elements I’ve made. This works surprisingly well because it takes a while to model and animate, so usually I wake up one day and know the whole film without even thinking about it.
I don’t really like the idea of having a thing mapped out and then simply re-creating a script / storyboard. To me that turns the act of making into work that needs to be done.
Anyway, for some reason I wrote a script at the start of the year and I guess I’m going to make it. I want to animate something a bit more ‘Tom and Jerry’, so… we’ll see how that goes.
As the project is 8 pages and involves 3 characters, 3 apartments and a hellscape metropole from the windows of the building I’m going to put models up onto here as I make them.
I’m leaning towards making the character models quite… ugly. I want this film to have handdrawn elements, so rather than model the mouths I’ve decided to draw them with grease pencil.
I work pretty quickly when it comes to characters, probably too quickly… I tend to give myself one day per character for modelling and rigging. I work low poly and don’t re-topologise. I’ll draw the mouths as I animate.
This is how the lead character is looking. I’ve modelled and rigged layered clothes on top of the model, so it’s not super efficient in terms of polys, but it does mean I can use the same setup for scenes where the character is in various stages of dress.
In a few days I’ll decide if this is looking too crap. It amuses me at the moment though and that’s kind of the point.
aaaand, now I’ve made the final character. This one is probably my favourite. Reminds me of a knock off, slightly rubbish 3D simpson vibe? Anyway, she’s rigged and ready to go. I haven’t bothered to animate the example video this time:
I might go back and look at the main character once I’ve done some environment work as it feels the worst. To be totally honest, I wasn’t expecting to have all 3 characters made and ready to go so quickly. I think I might also change the colour of the neighbour’s skin. He could go greenish if I push the shirt elsewhere.
I’ve been making some boring modular architecture elements - walls, ceilings and a floor. I find its better to make sets with individual elements I can easily hide if they’re in the way of the camera.
I think I will ultimately draw the backgrounds, but I’m not good enough to simply imagine and draw the spaces so I think it makes sense to make simple models, animate in the space and then somewhat trace from there. I do fear this might lead to boring imagery with perfect perspective, but I don’t see much alternative.
It would be nice to take lots of pre-built elements like ovens and fridges and tables, chairs, but I don’t have anything like that, so I’ll just have to bodge together my own. That will take quite a long time, what with 3 flats to make.
I tried downloading some Ikea stuff the other day, but a single sofa was hundreds of thousands of polys and a nightmare to handle, so I think it will be more hassle than it’s worth to go that route.
Inevitably I put the modular pieces together… I somewhat knew I’d do that - making them individually was part of tricking myself into getting more done rather than dallying.
Obviously at the moment this looks a bit ‘bad CG’ from the 90s, but I’m really happy to be making such fast progress to build upon. I’m also happy the rooms don’t feel totally flat.
Immediate needs -
Change the front door. I need a yale lock and a letterbox for plot reasons.
Fix the weird radiator.
Tiles in the kitchen floor and the bathroom too. That didn’t occur to me until now…
Lightswitches and power sockets.
Populate with objects.
Texture, obviously.
•fixed radiators
• changed front door
•tiled bathroom and kitchen
• added kitchen units
• put on some basic janky wall paper
10,000 verts now, which is more than it needs to be, but not too bad as I haven’t been very careful.
It’s very easy, too easy, to move cameras when you have 3D space. I always plan not to move the camera in my films, but immediately break the rule. In this instance I might try to be stricter, especially if I am using he 3D model as a base for hand painting backgrounds. Perhaps if I want movement I will say I need to move layed 2D elements instead.
Today I continued to add to the flat, but then started to feel it’s more useful to map out an animatic, so I switched to that. I can then decorate the flat based upon what shots I need.
This is the first two pages of the script. I haven’t included characters, slime and holes in the floor and might have to make amends based on when this is added:
(exported without any lights and low res for speed)
I don’t tend to animate when I’ve got real work and this is my first day off all week, so the Sludge has been on hold.
Today, to get back in the swing I thought I might try some movement tests. Adding the character to the scene made me immediately realise the picture was too low on the wall, so i’ve annoyingly changed the shot to something less visually symmetrical.
Initially I tried to have my character swing around into frame in a cartoony slide movement, but I find it a bit awkward. I’ve tried another attempt that’s simpler and better in which the character sticks his head into frame and then pops up in place.
I also realised the walls need to shake, not the camera. I will probably keep working on this shot to start to figure out how the film should look, not only in movement, but in visual style.
I’m back to my first shot iteration with the low picture, and now I’m just fudging it so my character is clipping through the ground up to their knees. It’s a better composition and I’m not sure why I moved away from it in the first place. We don’t see the knees, so who cares?
Anyway, I got bored of the idea of improving the first shot, so my approach has shifted like the wind again. Now I’m just bodging forward getting the blocking out. Maybe if I can make a bad version of the film I can go back and make everything look better.
Annoyingly I seem to only be getting 12fps playback in blender and I keep animating things twice as fast as they ought to be. It’s only when I output it everything looks in double speed. For now I’ve just … played it back at 50% speed, but I’ll have to move the keyframes.
This export is rubbish! I’m not sure why I’m sharing daily progress. I’m not convinced it helps the process…
I’m not even sure I’m making this project at this point. This weekend I decided to go back to basics and make some movement tests for fun. In all honesty I still don’t even know how to make a proper walk cycle, so… Tom and Jerry is a long way off.
Anyway, I made a few things that I’d like to try drawing on top of. This would be a terribly inefficient workflow as it means modelling and animating in 3D and then cel rotoscope those outputs…
eeeeeeeee.
Right now I think it’s the only chance I have of making something that moves in a way that I like.
I’ve now tried rotoscoping this animation as planned. I guess it’s an interesting comparison. It takes some of the computer-made feeling away, but it is a lot of work. Something like this is better suited to 24fps, but 12 a second is more than enough images to trace…
