m-club: May 2007

Portfolio Animation TURTLE

3D Animation Stage 3 - Portfolio Evulation

The last project we were given for Advanced Animation was to create a short narrative animation.

From the start of the project, there had been a number of changes to my storyboard. My initial idea was to create a story about turtle and rabbit. However due to the enormous workload and limited time, I felt that almost the design would not work. Finally, I selected a topic about skipping class. The reason for choosing this theme is I think it will easily get responses from students. My story basis outline is of a turtle getting up later and lies about real reason of absenting the classes.

I created one animal character which is turtle, exterior environment and indoor scene for this story. The character is not a very difficult model. However I feel the final outcome of my model is slightly different as I imagined at the beginning. I thought the turtle must be very cute but when I showed the turtle to my friends, all of them said it is a dinosaur. I found it was hard to see the mouse while I set the camera in front of the turtle. The whole character just looks like a green egg with a pair of eyes. Therefore I had to put the turtle head a little bit higher in the screen shooting.

The exterior environment is consisted of a house, banana mailbox, trees and fense. I am very satisfied with these props and I put them at the beginning of the whole story. This exterior environment could explain the place where this story happened and I think it is good enough to attractive the audiences to watch the following scenes. Obviously, the indoor scene is not as good as the exterior. It is very simple, only consist of a bed, bureau, clock and chair.

The story should express several emotions such as panic (when turtle see the clock and find he was late for go to university); and silliness (when turtle try to dress his shell but make it in reverse). So the morph tool is one of the most important techniques I used in this animation. I have created totally 12 differnet
motion in this animation.

There were no big problems in my turtle character. The rigging works fairly well. The only regretful thing was I didn’t use particle effects in this animation.

For the sound of the animation, the all clips were provided by
http://www7.flash8.net/sound.shtml. This website has a lot of free materials and it is really helpful for my audio editing. The lighting is still same as my previous project. Three lights have been used in the movie scene, one omi and two target spot.

There are a number of things I want to improve in the future.
1. The story could be more interesting.
2. Using more props to represent the turtle’s life and then let audience know more about this turtle. Such as I can create some mess textbook on floor, then audiences will easily know this turtle is a student.
3. improve the rhythm of action. Especially on the cut which is turtle find he dressed his shell reverse. The rhythm is too slow, I think it can be more smoothly.
4. allocate more time on sound design. I am not pleased with sounds. Although I have already attempted to use more than one clips in this animation, it still can be improved in the future I think.

I felt the whole animation went according to plan. I think animation course project help me to be more confident with the techniques. I quite pleased with my final animation project.

Labels: Animation