Chelsea Butler

There have been many hardships and emotions that I have experienced when completing the Major project. To say it was difficult is a bit of an understatement, but on the flip side, it has been satisfying to see the progress that I have made in the past few months.  There are many things that I wish I could change about this project as I feel that my abilities to animate and produce a short film are not up to scratch when thinking about it in a professional manner. There are still many things that I need to learn to be able to reach my personal goals and there have been times when I doubted my capabilities as an artist and animator. I have caught myself wondering whether I am good enough to enter this industry at times. But I do still try and remind myself that I did the best that I could despite the pandemic and how that effected my productivity and mental health. This is something that I’m constantly working on so that I can better look after myself in the future which will hopefully l

  Project Title: Love and Beyond   The concept of this animation was to depict a love story.  The idea is that René wasn't really lucky when it came to romance, and his past experiences were an example of that. He then met Linette and everything changed. However, a ghost from his romantic past comes to haunt him, literally. The ghost is jealous and tries to win René back, but along the way she realises that they perhaps aren't meant to be as they are both from different worlds. René shows that he will still cherish those fond memories that they made together, but it was time for him to move on. Although this is not the type of love the ghost desires, she accepts and is happy for René.   The goal for this project was to create an animated short film depicting the story above. Due to external factors that no one could control, only half the film has been animated. However, I was also able to complete a demo reel of all my models as well as a production document to accompany this.

Here are some rendered stills from my animation with added lighting.

This is a playblast test to see how my scene will look with the animation and the props. I haven't included any lighting or the sky as of yet, and I need to tweak the characters movement to feel more natural. 

       

Here is a compiled post of all of the work I have done so far. While I am more behind than where I would like to be, I am quite pleased with the work that I have produced so far. My plan moving forward is to start animating my scenes and continue making matte paintings for my environments. The ideal situation would be that I would have a fully rendered film in time for submission, but should the worst case scenario occur, I want to at least have a playblasted version of my film with some sounds to accompany it. I am feeling confident that I can produce something in time for the submission, so now it is full steam ahead. Interim Presentaion   Updated Storyboard      Character Turnarounds

These are the turnarounds for my characters with their final textures. I still need to add NCloth to the sleeves of the dresses and one of the skirts, but overall I am very pleased with the outcome.

It took a little longer than I would have liked, but I have now almost completed the rigging of my models. I plan to rig the hair of Linette and the Ghost, and rig the tie for René. I have also completed the eyebrow and mouth blend shapes for each model and included controls for ease of access.  

I have now managed to complete most of the skinning for my three characters. This took a while to do as there were some complications in terms of my geometry. The collar of René's shirt was a bit of a challenge as I needed to weight some of it to the neck joints, and I have yet to figure out how to skin his tie. It may involve needing to add some joints as I plan to have it move during my animation.     As for Linette, her torso was the most challenging as there are many separate pieces of geometry that make up the top of her dress. I also plan to use NCloth to give her sleeves and skirt the look of flowy fabric.   Finally, for my ghost character, the most complicated part was trying the skin the shoulder area. She initially had a bardot neckline on her dress, however, because the collar was sitting in an awkward position, skinning became a struggle and in the end I resolved this by altering the geometry of the torso. As a result, I also needed the cut the head in a different posit

We began taking animation classes with a professional games animator, James, last week. This week, we were tasked with creating some quick 3D poses using the Bony rig and some reference images provided. The rig was easy to use and the exercise was a lot of fun to do. Here are the poses that I created during the class:

It took me a lot longer than I anticipated, but I updated my story for my animation. Its very rough and unrefined, and after finishing it I realise that I could've added in more details and panels to deepen the story (perhaps showing the ghost realising that she really is a ghost and is "no longer of this world"). I also realise that I need to practise drawing different camera angles and perspective, so I plan on reasearching into that a bit more at a later date. I may update this storyboard as I progress with rigging my characters and create the environments, but I think this gets the main point of the story across.

I have now organised the UVs for all three of my characters now. I had a little difficulty when it came to the hair of my characters because they are individual tube shapes, but I managed to lay them out and fit them into the grid, despite it being tightly packed.  

 The Minor project has been quite a journey for me in terms of professional growth. Due to the unforseen circumstances of current world events, things took a turn for all us, and we delved into the world of working from home. I feel quite fortunate that I have access to a working computer at home, even if the internet can be a bit tempermental.  When it comes to the work for my project, I feel that the premise of my story was relatively good; the idea of a romance involving a ghost and a human seemed quite exciting and I wanted to work with that. Utilising this concept did prove a little challenging though. It wasn't so much  that I couldn't come up with a story for this concept, but rather I had several ideas that didn't quite hit the mark for me, and so this has lead me to fall behind a little, as I now need to redraft my storyboard to fit the new idea. I have been struggling to come up with something engaging and entertaining, and am still learning about camera shots to

            Premise Submission Post

These are videos displaying the turnarounds for the characters of my animation. It shows a temporarily textured version, a "clay" grayscale version, and a wireframe version for each model.        

 Here is the bench prop where my story will mainly be taking place. It was relatively straightforward in creating, considering I designed the arm rest and legs with a swirly pattern. I will be texturing this prop with wood for the planks and iron for the arm rest and legs.

 Here are the finished models of my three characters. I had a lot of fun creating my own characters and seeing how they look in 3D. I will now begin rigging each of them to bring them to life. 

Modelling the hair for my characters proved to be a bit of a challenge. After speaking with my tutor, and a few trial and error tests, I decided to model the hair using tube shapes. I did this by creating the outline with a curve. Once happy with the shape of the curve, I then created a platonic solid and adjusted its shape slightly by using a lattice. I then attached the platonic solid shape to the curve using the Curve Wrap tool under the deform menu. From there, I then readjusted the shape in the attribute editor and the positioning of the curve with the vertex.   As for the body modelling of my male character, it was relatively straight forward. I think the only issue I had was when I was creating the shirt collar and tie, but this was quickly resolved. I will now be attaching the completed head models to my boy models.

 Linette Head Model: https://chelsea-a-butler.blogspot.com/2020/11/minor-linette-model-progress.html https://chelsea-a-butler.blogspot.com/2020/12/minor-linette-head-model-progress-2.html Linette and Ghost Body Models: https://chelsea-a-butler.blogspot.com/2021/01/minor-linette-and-ghost-body-model.html Rene Head Model: https://chelsea-a-butler.blogspot.com/2020/12/minor-rene-head-model-progress.html

Here are the body models so far for my characters, Linette and the Ghost. As they have been designed to look the same, the base of the model was shared between the two, and then I built the different features off of them. With my Ghost model, I have not included a pair of legs and feet as I want her to float. The idea is to have her dress float and move around as if a breeze was making it flutter.