Animatic

Here is our completed Animatic. This is the current story with timings at the moment but we plan to change this going into production. The general idea is final but some of the details will likely be changed.

The animatic shows the general idea of our story, it also shows how some of the lighting may be done in the final animation. Also some of the sounds and ambience is what we are also aiming at in the final animation.

Final Concept Art

Here is the final concept art for Ivan's House, Ivan himself and his wife Rowena. These show some of the colours we are going for in our animation as well as the visual style of the building and the characters. The concept art also shows how the characters current state. For example Rowena looks distressed by current events.

Ivan's House has been damaged by the hurricane but not completely destroyed.

Ivan

Rowena

Concept Art

Concept art is important in a group production as it allows everybody to get the same picture as the concept artist, once everybody has agreed on a style only then can you move onto production. If this weren't the case you could have people creating assets with very different styles that do not fit together in the same animation.
Below is the concept art we have produced to show the style and themes we are going for.

Here is some examples of destruction.

Shown here is a collection of possible building styles we could choose from.

Some assets are shown in the image above.

Examples of wooden boards are useful for 3D assets producers to get a good visual style for the animation

Here are some sketches for a possible look of our characters

An environment drawing here shows how the street will look in the animation.

Another set of sketches of what the main character may look like.

House designs are important in the theme so here is a look at what they may look like.

Getting a lot of different variations of the same thing is a good idea as it lets us fine tune what we want out of these assets.

Another environment scene here shows the tones we are heading towards.

Render Tests

During Pre-production doing render tests are a good way to show of 3D style to our group members. In this example you can see a fence which is the style we are going for, this can be repeated in other assets such as houses or lamp posts.

Above here you can see the style we are going for on this fence, the snow is fairly simple and could be improved later, but this is just to show off the visual style.

To create this effect we used a particle generator which leaves particles on a mesh procedurally. Then the particles are turned into a mesh which can be deformed.

Mood Boards

Mood Boards are a important part of pre-production, they allow teams to share ideas of themes and locations. In our mood-boards we were able to see what sort of style and choices we could make in terms of concept art and pre-visualisation.

This is a mood-board for the broken buildings we will have inside the village, it shows the sort of destruction we're going for.

The town hall is the central building in the village, it's style is important because different countries build in different ways, we need to be consistent while creating this environment so a set style is good to have.

Here is another mood-board for some of the wooden accommodations. These need to look flimsy enough to seem breakable in a storm.

This mood-board shows the styles of clothing are main character could wear, our environment is going to be cold so our main character will need to be suitably dressed.

The background of the village is also something that will need to be created so getting a good theme for that design is good to do early.

The buildings in the village are important. we have taken sources from different countries and cultures to try and get a feel for what sort of village we will use.

Hurricane Script

Here is the Script for our film, this is still a work in progress so expect the final film to be different slightly.

“Hurricane”

FADE IN:

EXT. SNOWY MOUNTAINSIDE – NIGHT

The Scene opens up on the main character “Ivan” walking along a snowy path at night; he is a stout portly man dressed up warmly and has a briefcase which he is holding tightly. The sound of crunching snow can be heard as Ivan walks.

The weather is snowy but it is gentle and sounds of the wind can be heard as this scene plays out. The camera pans to keep Ivan in view as he walks, as the camera is doing this a village comes into view, it is difficult to see it clearly through the snow.

EXT. VILLAGE – NIGHT

The shot cuts to Ivan walking down a gentle slope into the village, his pace has not changed. In the town there are a couple of lamp posts, some are off and broken but some remain on giving a nice amount of lighting to the scene.

 A Tracking shot moves through the village keeping Ivan in view. As he walks it becomes clear something is not right, Ivan starts to look around noticing bits of debris on the ground, bits of timber are strewn across his path. Ivan stops in the middle of the street.

The camera now rises above Ivan and you can see that the town has been destroyed, parts of roofs are missing, windows are smashed and some houses have collapsed partly or completely.

The Camera then cuts to a close up of Ivan; he begins to look around at the devastation. His eyes become wider as he takes all of this in.

The camera cuts back and Ivan begins to walk again, his pace has increased.

EXT. VILLAGE CORNER – NIGHT

The camera continues to follow Ivan along his path through the village panning to keep him in shot. As Ivan begins to turn the corner he notices a board with something on it. As he looks closer he stops. The camera now cuts to a close up of the board showing a message saying “Hurricane warning”. Ivan reaches into his pocket and pulls out a photo of his family, he looks around at the devastation and then moves off again after putting the photo back in his pocket, his pace quickens again.

EXT. IVAN’S HOUSE - NIGHT

As Ivan continues to move down the street he finally gets to his own house, however sadly the house has also been destroyed, but not as badly as some of the other houses. Ivan walks up the steps towards his house as he approaches the door, the shot then cuts to a closer view between Ivan and the front door. As he starts to turn the knob the door becomes loose and falls off its hinges flat inside the house.

INT. IVAN’S HOUSE – NIGHT

The camera is now inside Ivan’s house. The house is a mess, most of the windows have been broken by the storm and broken glass litters the floor. As Ivan walks around the room the sound of walking on broken glass can be heard, Chairs have fallen over and cupboards are wide open. Part of the roof has also broken exposing moonlight from above; snow is also slowly coming in from here.

He lights a small paraffin lamp which lights up the room to reveal a picture laying face down on the ground, he bends down to pick it up which shows another picture of his family, the glass frame is cracked but Ivan picks it up and puts it back on the mantelpiece.

Ivan then hears a banging noise from below; he looks down quickly and becomes cautious. He hears the noise again, Ivan quickly drops his briefcase and grabs a bit of wood off the floor that had fallen down and makes his way back outside.

EXT. IVAN’S HOUSE – NIGHT

The camera is in a fixed position as Ivan walks outside his house and around the back, he disappears behind the house then the camera cuts to a view of a cellar door at the back of the house, it is slightly ajar as Ivan walks up to it. He slowly reaches down and open it up, a flickering candle light appears to be coming from inside.

INT. CELLAR - NIGHT

As he goes inside there are candles lit across the room which are flickering a lot, Ivan then closes the cellar door and the light becomes normal again. Ivan cautiously makes his way through the cellar and he sees the shadow of somebody in the other room, he raises his weapon as he moves around the corner.

The shot then cuts to a long shot of Ivan facing into the room, he is shocked at first then his face changes to happiness, he drops the plank of wood he was carrying. The music now changes from the ambience before to a more joyful track. The shot then cuts again showing Ivan’s Family all sat around a pot of food, hearing the noise of the wood dropping they turn around and also appear shocked but then become happy. His children Run towards and past the camera. The shot cuts again to show Ivan with an arm around each of his children. He then smiles at his wife and she smiles back. The shot then fades out.

FADE IN.

EXT. VILLAGE - NIGHT

Wide shot shows the town one last time, then it fades out and the credits roll.

Film Treatment - Working Title "Hurricane"

Film Treatment – Pop Tarts Animation

Themes

In the film there will be two themes that are present. The first and most major theme is “Man vs. Nature”; a poor village in a very cold area now have to deal with Mother Nature who has brought a hurricane over the village, destroying many buildings and causing havoc. The other theme in the film is “love conquers all”; Even though his village has been mostly destroyed he still wants to find his family that he loves and that keeps him going even though it seems like everything is lost.

Genre and Style

The genre of the film will be Drama, there won’t be any action sequences in the film or other things like that, the film will be about the main character and how he reacts to the hurricane that hit his village. The script is designed to make you sympathize with the main character but still has a happy ending.

The visual style in the film that is being pushed is non-realistic; the style will be slightly cartoony. All the assets and buildings are going to be designed to be crooked; there will a lack of parallel lines in a lot of objects and assets in the scenes. Colours in the film will be slightly exaggerated, the same goes for characters. They will have exaggerated proportions, like caricatures.

Textures are a big part of style and the textures we will be going for are painted styling. This gives a nice look without it being too realistic, it also means that textures can be smaller as they will have less detail then super realistic textures which will decrease render times.

Animation Method

3D Animation is the main method that will be used to produce this film, we feel 3D animation will be best for the film as the idea is suited towards it; also our team are 3D animators so this is the best decision for our group.

Hand Animation will be the method of animation as opposed to motions capture, this is due to the characters in the film being stylised, so their animations will also be stylised whereas motion capture would lead to realistic animation.

To create assets polygon modelling will be used to create them but it is also possible that 3D sculpting can be used to create some assets and characters in the film. These will likely be done in Mudbox, 3D Coat or ZBrush.

Particle effects will also come into play as well; they will be used to create a snowing effect and could also be used to create lighting effects. Volumetric lighting is also a possibility during certain scenes in the script.

Rendering would likely be done using Mental Ray as this give the best look for all the default renderers in Maya or 3DS Max.

Speaking of packages, Maya will be the package our group uses the most; it will be used to create animation as well as rendering. 3DS Max could be used to create assets as these can be imported and exchanged between packages. Other pieces of software that will be used include Photoshop, which will be used to created textures as well as other preproduction assets.

Target Audience

The Film we are creating won’t have a specific demographic but will be catered towards non children as the film is in the Drama genre children aren’t generally interested in this type of film. We feel our target audience of older people will find it easier to sympathise with the main character.

Animation Blog

Welcome to the Pop Tarts Animation blog, Here you will be able to see all our work in progress for our group project this year. I am Thomas Capstick and I will be updating the blog with work as it comes in to keep this as an up to date showcase for our work.

Our group consists of four members, here is our team form to show which rolls each of us will be undertaking.

Individual full name and student ID:	Main skills (including software skills):	PRE-PRODUCTION ROLES Tasks you agree to do during AGP1 Group Work	PRODUCTION ROLES Tasks you agree to do during AGP2 Group Work
1 Daniel Buchan L1189040	Maya, 3DS Max, Mudbox, Z Brush, Adobe AE, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator	Pre-Vis Moodboard	Lead Modelling, Animation, Texturing, Character Animation Consult.
2 Thomas Capstick K0256628	Maya, 3DS Max, Adobe AE, Adobe Photoshop	Animatic Producer	Asset Modelling, Lead Animation, Lighting, VFX, UVs, Compositing, Rigging, Blogger
3 StephenCrossley J9095728	Maya, Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator/After Effects/Premiere, Nuke	Concept art Director	Asset Modelling, Environment Modelling, Character Modelling, Animation, Lighting, VFX, Compositing, Lead SFX/Music, Rigging
4 Benjamin Robinson K0053009	Maya, Adobe Photoshop, Nuke, 3D Coat/Z Brush	Concept art Storyboards	SFX, Lead Compositing, Animation, Lead Texturing, UVs, Lighting