Production DiaryLegs Animation

By Ellie Baily-Jones UP727902

Initial Planning Ideas

My initial ideas for this project was to create an animation based on that of Indiana Jones’ ‘Temple of Doom’ by creating a temple of some sort and different obstacles for the legs to avoid, such as trenches, boulders and swinging. The character would have been a simple ball shaped body with the legs attached but with props and accessories that made them look like Indiana Jones, for example the hat and the whip he has at his side.

I also considered creating a spin-off character and putting them in a situation where they need to rescue a damsel in distress. Although I wanted to create an animation where the narrative was something completely different to anything I’d done before.

I wanted to design a proper set where the character can run around, rather than create something more abstract set with just shapes which they jump around and do parkour movements.

Eventually, I decided to go with the horror genre as it is a genre I haven’t really attempted yet. My other animations, including ones in my other units, are fairly comical, so I’d like to create a more scary narrative to challenge myself and also to show I can create different story lines.

I was stuck between creating a haunted house scene or a haunted forest. Whichever it was to be, I wanted to make sure that I did enough research to ensure that the set looked as realistic as possible, and also to guarantee I made it look somewhat spooky or scary. I looked at Luigi’s Haunted Mansion as a reference point to start thinking of designs.

I eventually decided on creating a haunted forest instead, as I felt it would be more enjoyable and easier to create a more natural looking set, and I felt that it would enable me to make a more spooky environment.

Whilst brain-storming different ideas for a storyline, I decided that some sort of chase through a dark, spooky forest would be fun to create. This story appealed to me the most, as it meant I could show off my animation skills by having the legs run, jump and maybe kick something or fall over.

Video references

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CztxQIn5ZhQ

Before starting storyboarding, I thought it would be a good idea to look for some visual references of a forest chase scene. I came across the forest chase scene from Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows and found it to be the most useful reference in terms of set design and different camera angles and shots.

Picture References

Storyboard

The storyboard (despite it not being extremely detailed) I feel conveys the right emotions and narrative for a horror scene. In my opinion, what works the best is that we can’t actually see what the character is running away from, and it is only towards the end that it jumps out towards the character, then the scene fades to black. This means we are left wondering what the creature is, hopefully putting the viewers more on edge and creating more suspense. Additionally, the scene is going to be fairly dark, and I’d like to add something more dynamic like fog into the scene to show off my Maya skills and to create a more chilling atmosphere.

As part of my story, the character stops in its tracks and spots a house in the distance with its lights on in which he goes to seek refuge from the monster. I researched different reference images, but found this one on the bottom right the most fitting to my story. I used Photoshop to go over the original image to get the general shape and feel for the house, but added light to the windows and changed the colour scheme to suit my animation.

Textures

I used photoshop to create the texture for my characters. I feel the shoes work well the best and I enjoyed creating them.

One aspect of the set design was making sure the backdrop of the forest looked realistic. Obviously, I couldn’t just create an entire forest, so I used Photoshop shop and the reference from the Sherlock Holmes clip to create this PNG background, which gives the impression of the forest in the distance with mist over the top. It was interesting to create and actually worked very well with the overall design and feel of the set.

With the gate, I attempted to create a realistic looking brick walk myself, but couldn’t achieve the right textures or colours, so I resorted to using an existing image. I enjoyed creating the bark texture for the trees and for the forest floor, I wanted to make it look muddy and patchy and I feel I achieve this.

Environment

Creating the set was quite challenging, as I had to address whether or not I create a big enough scene where the legs could run continuously in the same direction. Instead I created a fairly big forest using cylinder polygons as trees and a flat plane which I then manipulated the vertex’s with soft select to give it a more natural surface.

With the animation, I used camera cuts and moving the models in between keys to edit the legs to look as if they’re running in the same direction for a long time rather than just being animated in different places of the forest.

Producing the Scene

I started off with a flat plane and then duplicated a number of thin, tall cylinders to create the forest aspect. I had to make sure the trees looked natural in terms of placing so I made sure that there weren’t obvious ‘rows’ of trees, and I also manipulated the edges to make them not completely straight. After that, I produced the backdrop to go round the outside of the scene so that it didn’t look as if the forest was floating when it came to rendering it.

The other important part of the scene was the bricked wall with the metal gate. I produced these elements in a separate space in the file, but I used the same textures and shapes to make the scenery around it look the same. I also wanted to create something different which would add to the scary element of my animation, so I used a video tutorial to create rolling fog around the bottom of the characters ankles. Also, to make the gate look more realistic I applied a Blinn as opposed to a lambert to make the metal look shiny. I feel all these elements combined with the textures I produced created a realistic setting for my narrative.

To make animating easier for this project, I created a looped animation of the legs running slowly and also sprinting. This meant that for the elements where I filmed the legs just running I could move the global control and key those so that I didn’t need to keep animating the different frames for a running animation. I used the image above as a reference for when I first animated the model.

Lighting tests

These practice renders worked extremely well, and I feel they convey the right atmosphere, especially with the fog.

Final thoughts

Overall, I am extremely pleased with the outcome of this animation. It has been the most detailed project I have completed to date, and even though it was very challenging at times, I am happy that I pushed through and completed it to the best of my ability. Texturing I feel was the most difficult aspect of this animation, and even though I created a texture for the legs on Photoshop, I wasn’t able to use it for the final animation due to time constraints.

Creating the environment was the most technical and difficult bit, but yet I still found it the most enjoyable. The backdrop works really well and helps to create more atmosphere within the forest and make it appear more creepy.

I feel that in some parts the animation is a bit shaky and not extremely realistic, so if I was to do this project again, I would spend more time working on the detail of the animation instead of focusing mainly on the environment and creating atmosphere.