Story is the structure that gives form to animation; then if you intend to animate a piece, the natural question would arise, an animated piece about what? What is the story and how do you arrive at it?
The purpose of this article is to build our understanding of creating an animated short. We will investigate and explore the
animation process, and by throwing a serious study on the work of others, perhaps
we will gain valuable insight into production workflow, helping us to form a
better plan for the assembly of our own work. Hopefully, we will map a route to
a smoother production process.
Animation production doesn't need to be some big mysterious
thing, or to be put in terms that are overly academic. An animated story can be
as simple as "Man lifts box", or an overly complicated saga of
several volumes, but it is story that drives the action.
Because it is always good to research before you start, I
found myself in Google looking for some strong content to base my article on,
it didn't take long to find the article 'Story Development in Animated
Features" by Kevin Koch on his blog Syncrolux. Link http://www.synchrolux.com/?p=271
The gist of Kevin's article is that making an animated short
is a process that starts with story, and
most animation story is clearly defined in advance of actual animation. For
my own work to progress right now, it is important to lay down a plan of the
action before I get into blocking out a scene.
Through research I have read that an animator can be hired
based on as little as ten seconds of strong animation, and after viewing
countless demo reels of working animators who used such reels to land the jobs
that they have, I would easily point to the fact that a large majority of reels
for the game industry are stacked with cycles and short action pieces that seldom
relate to one another or don't in any real sense tell a story. Most
demo reels for working game animators seem to say, "I can create
convincing action with a strong sense of weight". The game animator reels
often display the animators ability to convince the viewer with the characters
occupation and use of the digital place. Strong game character reels display
mainly the physicality of action and are little concerned with where the action
is taking place, or why, or when. Then it would seem a waste of time to go
through the development of story to build a reel for the game industry, but the added effort I believe will help to build a higher level of skill and that is always the prime goal.
Giants have always fascinated me,
probably the influence of King Kong and the transformers, with some Battle Tech
thrown in there, Giants and humans fighting Giants or becoming Giant are things
I want to include in this short story. The narrative of the short I'm
endeavoring to create should include
·
Robots
·
Aliens
·
soldiers
·
ground and flying vehicles
·
High technology
·
Superheroes
After all, what is an action sequence without super heroes? I
include the last as an homage to my first and earliest artistic influence,
Marvel Comics. Now it seems that solid action and a strong grasp of weight are
the things most prominently displayed on most game animation reels, I am
definitely drawn to the action genera and so I am intending to push myself
towards creating the kind of things I like in games and film.
At this point in development this short piece is going to be
three minutes or less. Fast paced action that arrives quickly to the point. The
gist of it is this; soldiers quickly drive into the scene that appears to be
some sort of abandoned sporting arena out of antiquity, the soldiers dismount
and take up defensive positions around their hummvees. Suddenly portals open up
out of thin air at the entrance of the arena, alien troopers drop out of the
portals and charge forward to engage the soldiers. Crazy firing of rounds by
the soldiers as another portal opens up and a large robot drops to the ground
and attacks the soldiers. All soldiers killed but one, and just as the robot
closes the distance to finish the job, Cpt. Atom drops in out of nowhere to
destroy the aliens and robot and to rescue the remaining soldier, whisking him
off through a wormhole to another location, an underground command center.
Process
·
Script
- Now that we have a general idea of where we are going, we start to plan
out how we will get there. The first step is to write it out in the form of a
script. The total length of our current script is 12 scenes, and looks longer
than the simple idea first implied.
·
Story
Boards - This is where we will begin to develop the script in a visual
form. In the story boards we will work out camera angle and shot composition,
as well as getting a feel for timing
·
Asset
Development - For this piece we will be using almost entirely pre-made
assets, created by other talented individuals and supplied for such creative
endeavors as our short action piece. There is some rigging, texturing and
simple modeling that I will do, but for the most part the assets were found
first, and the story developed around what was available. This is of course
backwards to how shorts are usually made.
·
Animatic
- The animatic is a simple story reel that contains the storyboard frames as
well as some simple camera moves and very basic character key pose animation.
This short reel assembled with Photoshop and After Effects will serve to
establish timing and give us a blueprint for scene layout.
·
Scene
Layout - This step is where the characters are brought into the scene
environment and staged according to the script and the animatic. We will use
proxies in the beginning of layout and then bring in the rigged meshes as we
start the animation blocking phase. In layout we will set up the files
according to the scenes. Each scene will contain several shots that will
include camera moves and cuts.
·
Animation
Blocking - Now we begin to pose the characters, working on one
character at a time and moving through the entire scene. We are using Maya and
the keys are set to linear and stepped. Most of the action will be pose to
pose, but of course there will be times where we will work straight ahead.
·
Animation
Splines - Now that the blocking for all character action is finished,
we convert the stepped keys to splines. This is where we jump into the graph
editor and smooth things out, refining our ease in and ease out as well as our
holds.
·
Animation
Final Polish - Here we comb through the scenes using playblast to view
the action and make final corrections.
·
Dynamics
- Add in the dust, sparks, and other effects that will add to the action.
·
Lighting
- Each scene will Have its own separate lighting file where we will use Maya's
lighting tools to help establish mood and volume.
·
Rendering
- Now that the animation and lighting are finished, we will render the scenes
in passes using mental ray.
·
Compositing
- This is the final step where we will bring in the Maya Renders and audio into
After Effects and layer them together to create the final piece.
This basic blue print for
production comes from reading about how it's done by others, and looking at the
behind the scenes footage and listening to the comments of the creators of
films like Nine and The Secret of Nimh. This
is not something I have done completely,
or proven for myself. There have been several starts, and I have worked in all
the phases of production, but so far I have yet to complete the production
process from start to finish.
There is a lot of material on the
web about the subject of creating animated shorts and I would like to post a couple of links
here.
Here we see a really simple
thumbnail process, and this is after Steven has worked up a script.
Script here. Link:
The strength of this video is how
it shows the creative process in a raw fashion.
Lets also look at the video where
Steven brainstorms for the story idea.
Here is the Link:
At this point I will post this and
Return as my story develops.
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