Design for Animation CW2

Synopsis

An illegal game show has aired in Indonesia where contestants are thrown into a maze and have 30 minutes to escape. Their prize is freedom and popularity in beating the Maze and Rusty. Within that time limit, if the timer has run out a creature known as Rusty is released from his cage. Rusty then chases after the helpless contestants and kills them. 

Storyboard

Here is a storyboard that I have created for my scenes. I made three other storyboards before this but I had to make one that could be more simpler and easy to control while animating. 

Character Biography 

Rusty is a disfigured creature that has been created by a team of immoral scientists. He was created in order to aid the scientists in becoming famous and well-endowed. Rusty has one objective in his life; Massacre Everyone and Thing. When Rusty kills the contestants, he gains their souls. When Rusty obtains a soul, he becomes more and more powerful, much to the dismay of the scientists. In order for Rusty to remain in possession of his wits and powers, he must slaughter all the contestants who have unfortunately been selected to be placed into the maze. The scientists are unaware of just how powerful Rusty can become, and if they had been aware before creating him, they might not have gone as far as they did.

Formal Character Board

I wanted to create a skinny anorexic character for my story. I wanted him to be as scary as possible so adding a tight skin on a lanky boned character worked out very well. I had a few smaller designs when creating this character, such as having feet with three talons (toes) but I decided that I wanted to make him more interesting and instead, made him run on stilt like legs. Another design was for him to not have a mouth at all, which in theory could be cool, however I wanted him to have a bit more emotion so I believe making a decaying mouth was a great idea.

Character Facial Expressions

I tried to create facial expressions for my character, however this was a great challenge. I didn't really plan out how his facial expressions would look like throughout the design faze, because the "Happy" facial expression would always be his default face. Although, I do like the look on a few of the faces. especially the "Annoyed" facial expression. I still tried to make him terrifying whilst creating broad expressions.

Character Poses

Character With Background

I absolutely adore the look of this background design. I really tried to capture the fear that the contestants will see when entering the maze. 

Inspiration

I got some of my inspiration for my character by looking at various creatures from films and folk lore. I also looked at various camera angles that could be used for my scenes in the animation. The main inspiration being the creature in Pan's Labyrinth. This skinny, grotesque and frightening creature inspired me to create a character of my own for the animation. The camera angle (bottom left) has been an inspiration for me to create a scene with this exact angle, seeing this creepy creature waddle along scene and running down the hallway. 

Problems I Had

So for my 30 second animation, I wanted to create the whole scene all on one camera, so I decided to focus on how camera movements work in Harmony. I researched on how the camera can be manipulated in the scene so that it could look like a POV of some sort, but to start off I had to place a camera and a camera peg into the scene. Across the timeline, I had already set out specific scenes that I wanted my cameras to be used over them. It almost felt like the camera was the main focal point of my whole animation and that the drawings were mainly just the background for my camera to move around in. I used the transform tool a lot when I was moving the camera around on scene (highlighted in yellow). 

Lighting issues

With the addition of trying to add light/ shadows, it's been very difficult to try and add light into my scene. I know where to place the light however I am not too sure how to connect the correct nodes to another. I have observed many tutorials however my layers and nodes are too jumbled up and out of place to create a working light/ shadow in the scenes. I did want to create an eerie setting for the scenes by adding lights in the ceiling mainly they would be fixated in, although it would have been great to add swinging lights as well. 

Improvements 

In the first section of my animation, I originally had a black screen in the beginning which I intended to add audio of a man breathing and a heartbeat fading from out to in. I wanted to have panting and breathing in the animation however without any equipment I wasn't able to introduce my ideas into my animation. To tackle what I wanted the audience to feel what my character to feels in that motion, I decided to create hands in the POV. I created them in various situations such as, pressed up against a wall, grabbing the corner of a wall, and backing off from the wall. 

I believe that implementing more animation into the scene rather than sound really helped to move the story forward in the animation. The audience knows that this character is hiding from something and is scared so I put the emotions in the hands to really capture that sense of immersion. 

I would have added a background eerie audio into the animation as well to try and scare the audience even more, maybe something like a background noise of a silent room but with a distinct humming or dark sound.

My Animation

Here is the full animation, as you can see I was unable to implement a light source in the scene as it was too complicated to add it in. However, I am very happy with how the camera angles were used in the animation and I believe that it help moved the narrative forward.