Unit 9 is a unit which is animation and modelling heavy, essentially for this project we can either do a 3d animation and create a scene, as well as a prop for the character to hold and interact with. However the other option is we can do 2d projects, this is where we do everything I just listed above but in 2d form, so like a 2d scene with a 2d designed weapon. I will be going with the 3d option for this because I feel more comfortable working with 3d and I feel that I could produce a better outcome by using 3d software that I am familiar with, in addition I have some initial idea already some ideas for what I could do for the whole thing. The ideas will go in to more detail in below. For the animation of the character itself, we have to an animation where the character is either using the prop we will have made, however if it is something like a rucksack then obviously it could just be the character running or something similar with the rucksack just attached to them. The prop itself could be anything from a bag to a car, I think I will probably end up doing a detailed weapon or motorbike depending on the character.
Unit 9 - Mood-board & Ideas
For unit 9 I will be creating a character and working with animations to make able to move and then also design a prop or props for some renders as well to show clearly what the character is and who they are, for me it should clearly show who they are and what they do. So for my main ideas from the board above I have come up with 2 ideas I really like, and that think would be really cool. The first is the grim reaper but a modern take, so this would still be the grim reaper but probably with like a newer weapon like a gun and then also probably having a different face or having a mask which is really scary. If I made a version of the grim reaper it would be more scary than the first version and would have to be really intimidating.
The second option I was thinking about doing, this is also the one i prefer, is doing an assassin but in the style of steam punk, so this would be with something such as a long coat or a long mask that goes down the neck with some cogs on the character as well showing the steampunk theme as well. I was also considering doing steam punk goggle as well as they are really iconic in the steam punk style. In addition possibly having one of the cogs as a belt buckles. The other thing I was thinking about modelling for the character was some boots that would been related to steampunk as well, possibly piping on the sides of the boots. As for the prop I think that a a sword would be really good because it's not a loud gun and being an assassin you'd want them to be stealthy, the blade itself would be a copper colour like some other things from stream punk and then also have a cog on the top and a chain wrapped round the handle.
Initial Ideas for Character Design
For Unit 9 I have decided to go for a assassin, as you can see by the concept art the character will be dark coloured and will have a hood similar to the style of assassins creed. The character will be very masked off so it will be difficult to see their face, so I will not need to work too much on the face, however when styling in Mudbox there is a preset of a human so I will start by taking that and working on that. In addition the character itself will also have some straps going across the chest this could have some 3d models hanging off it, such as knives or maybe bullets. In addition the character will wear boots on their feet because they tend to look good and are also portrayed as something that assassin of this type of style might wear. The colours will be dark as I said but I think the best colours for the character will be black and white or maybe like a dark green or blue. The other I need to make sure of is that the character looks quite scary, inevitably they will still be an assassin and they do kill people so the general looks needs to be scary and stealthy.
In terms of props for the character I will model either or both a gun as well as a motorbike, the reason being an assassin would probably be using a gun to kill or in this case at least and the motorbike would be good just to show how they would move around but also it would be something cool just to have next to him. The props, like him, will be dark coloured for the stealthy kind of look.
Scene Plan for Unit 9 Animation
Using the graphics tablet I drew up the idea of having this kind of scene that my character will be in for my final animation. I have chosen this because, like my character, the scene will be dark and tense and the character is supposed to be an assassin using stealth so this seems like the kind of dodgy place you may find a character like this. The scene will be well texture and will look kind of abandoned but at the same time, a place where dodgy people may hang around. In addition to make the scene realistic there will be some detailed features and things that you would find in day to day life, these are things such as a garage door slightly open, a lamppost on and maybe door a little open. If I amble to I could also have flickering lights but this depends more on what software I will use for the final piece, if it was unreal it would be very easy however if it was 3ds max it would be more difficult as I have never used it for that animating.
Art style of Unit 9 piece
For this unit I have obviously decided that I would like to go try and model an assassin as you can see from the work above, at the moment I have the plan of the character being in a dark alley way in the dark with lots of rubbish surrounding him and scrap metal. The character will obviously be the main part of the scene so he will be stood central under the light coming from the lamppost. The character it's self will be dressed in black maybe with a contrasting colour across the chest like white maybe on the ammo straps across his chest. I feel the style of this is inspired heavily upon a mix of things, mainly assassin's creed for the character style, however I think that the movies of batman inspires the scenery, the scenes in this film are always very dark, quiet, dirty and feel dangerous and often portrayed as gloomy. I feel that this kind of style will be the best for this kind of character because I feel from both the appearance of the character and who the character is, this could be a kind of place you would find this character. In addition, following this kind of dark art style I think flickering city lights will really set off the look of the scene and make the whole that little bit more tense.
Camera Movement Ideas for Final Piece
For the camera movements and what the camera will record for the final animation I feel that, because I am going to spend lots of time on building the scene that the character sits in, it would be good if I had the camera cutting through the scene as well as recording the character as well. I think the best idea to do this could be to put the character down the alley way underneath a street lamp, so they are well lit, and then the camera slowly zooms in going down the alley and towards the character while they are doing their animation and with their prop in hand so this way I can showcase the character but also allowing the viewers to see the scene as well because the scene is as much a part of the animation as the character as this is what tells you the kind of character they are, because they viewers would be able to see that this dark character is hanging round in a dark alley way which looks to be dangerous.
Character Research for Unit 9
In terms of the audience for this animation I think that this would be aimed at people like dark games, especially open world, in addition to this maybe people like playing assassin's creed and similar games because the character is an assassin in the same sort of style, as well as this the scene is also dark like in some segments of some of the games. I feel that in terms of the age range of this, I think that it would be at a minimum age 12, I think this because the whole scene will be very dark, however the character probably wouldn't be doing anything violent or scary however the whole scene could be considered scary. Following from this, the movie 'Batman, the dark night' is age rated 12 and I feel that it is set similar, asin the location and the same sort of people as well.
3DS Max Initial Animation
As a simple start to animating in 3DS max without the use of Mixamo, following a tutorial I created a domino animation. The animation is a balling going down a ramp and then knocking the dominoes over, this is created by setting the ramp as a Static rigid body and the ball and the dominoes as dynamic rigid bodies. This allows the ball and dominoes to move and collide with each other and the ramp to stay stationary as a prop for the ball. Although this is some basic stuff I have just done, this is good because it means while my character is animating in my final piece for this unit I can have this likes this happening in the background to create possibly a more tense scene and maybe give the animation a more lifelike look as well.
Secondary Research
Market Place
After looking at the unreal market place for animation for sword swinging animations which are very similar to what I would like to do. I noticed a few things about their models and whole pages. Firstly while the characters are obviously the default characters the weapons are positioned very well on the characters, the weapons appear to be in the character's hands well and it makes the whole look of animations more realistic. In addition the characters move really dramatically and on the pictures on the website you can see that the characters have been given a custom stance to make them look like they are ready for combat. The layout of the weapons are also really good as they have grips where the characters hand should be so they can easily line the character correctly to the weapon for a really realistic feel. In terms of the prices they vary a lot, while scrolling there were some for £20 however most of them ranged from about £30 and upwards, the maximum prices was around £80, but for that you tend to get more controls and is available on most platforms. By comparison mine will also be a simple animation like some of the ones on unreal Market Place, however I feel that my animation will very much shorter as I have limited time to get this whole project done. So I think that when my animation is done, if it was put on Unreal I think it would be sold around the prices range of 15 to 20 as it will be a shorter animation and will also possibly less impressive as I have limited time so the models may be less detailed. In addition I also have to model a scene for my character as well. This is something that I didn't see very much of on the market place, I think this was due to making the character's animation more clear however I am going to build an environment for the character that will be suited to the character.
Style of Asset + Scenery
After researching into games that have used swords as the main weapons, I have picked out 4 different swords in 4 different games that I thought used swords that suited the games well but also looked generally cool and dark but it's also good that each of the games have this but also taking it's own style. As you can see, the game 'For Honour' and 'assassin's creed' took the most basic sword approach with the traditional sword shape and style, I think this is actually a really good style of weapon as it is very intimidating because it's a sharp piece of metal that looks like it weighs a lot and no one would want to get hit by it. I also think that this kind of style could potentially work i my animation if I changed the style of sword a little bit by making it more modern and more discrete as well as being coloured in a dark colour as well. In addition to customise the sword so it's not just a generic sword I could make the handle look very different by possibly cutting certain parts out of it or adding certain lines which would be subtle but obvious enough to look different and look like the character's own sword. However I also like sword from dark souls, which is the 2nd one, this sword is very much darker and you can see it looks like it is old and worn down but also has a custom blade as well as handle, I like this one because it is a lot darker and would fear it more. In addition this style of sword would probably suit the character I have made as well because it is an assassin so obviously is very dark and more likely to have a sword that is dark as well. While I think that the dark souls sword is really good I think by having the design of a generic sword with the texture style from the dark souls sword would look really good and would fit the character well.
These are 2 images that I have taken inspiration from when I was designing my scenery for my animation, I chose these 2 images because I wanted my character to me hid around a dirty and dodgy alleyway because my character is a assassin and I imagine this is the kind of place where they would probably be found. In addition while I would like my scenery to look roughly like the one on the left, I would also like the same kind of texture used on my buildings as is used in the right image. I would like to use this kind of texture to show that the place where he is in a city not just in an alleyway and exposed brickwork usually portrays this very well, in addition exposed brickwork also makes the buildings seem a little bit older when you find or create one with the brickwork being worn down a bit. I think it would also make the whole scene darker by having grey worn brickwork exposed because it will make the scene more rough and dodgy.
Codes and Conventions of Assassin Animation
For my animation I have decided to go for my character being an assassin and the character being in a alleyway, so the whole scene will be very dark but with an obvious view of the character and they are doing. The scene will also have lots of little props like cardboard and just general rubbish to make the whole scene more dark and gloomy and will also hopefully make the character look more intimidating, especially since he will be holding a sword and will be hooded. The character animation will be them swinging the sword around and looking like he is attacking something, he will be placed near the door way so it will look like he is trying to attack someone just in the door way, this way the viewer wouldn't be able tell that there is no one in the door way and the camera will be slowly coming down the alley way to where the character is but won't show the door so much so that the viewers can tell he is attacking no one. The lighting as I said will be quite dark, however I would like it to look like there is some kind of street lamp above the alleyway so it looks like it is in a city and at least has a little light but still quite dark as well. If I have time left, the audio should be the noises of the characters sword clashing against objects and car driving past in the distance as well as people talking in the distance, basically city kind of noises, possibly as well as some tense music. The most important thing is the character's animation so it looks right and not too laggy as well as the scenery around them as it makes the whole scene a bit more realistic and definitely set the scenes and helps the scene become easier to understand what is going on.
Colours and Textures in my Scene and Character
For my scenery on my animation, I am going to use a dark or grey coloured brick work texture, this will either be collected by me or downloaded and then referenced. But I would like to go with this kind of texture as it will show that the scene is based around somewhere old and a little dirty because the textures will make the buildings look old and faded and possibly a bit rough as well. But for the rest of the scene I am going use a range of dark colours, similar to the ones of the left image. For the floors plane I will use a dark grey colour because I want the floor to look like actual tarmac while I would like the use of an actual tarmac texture, it is very difficult to get it to the right scale on of the floor, as the floor has to be massive to cover the whole scene. Then there will be other things like garage doors, cardboard boxes and just general rubbish, these will all have their own texture to make them look realistic as they clearly do in real life. The most important prop texture is the garage door texture as it is most of the backdrop for the character's animation and will be in the background for the whole scene so I would like to make it look realistic. For the character I am going to apply to colour to it in 3ds max and will be a similar colour to the scene but not exactly the same colour so the character can actually been seen well. For small props on the character I will try and find a good dark metal texture, so his weaponry and tools look realistic, this also applies for the sword, I would also like to make this a dark metal so it looks realistic but still has the stealth element to it despite being a massive weapon.
Mudbox Character First Attempt
As you can see that character that I made in 3ds Max is quite like the first initial sketch work I did of them, this contained all the features that I had in mind for my character. However I didn't like how this model looked so scruffy, in addition I was having issues with colouring and texturing this model in mudbox as when I tried colouring certain parts of the sculpture it would paint somewhere else as well, hence why there is 2 random lines down the back of the cape. But for a first attempt at creating the character I was quite happy as I had something to work from. In addition I felt the hood was a very good part of the character so on the next sculpture or the next version of this I will probably use this. As well as this, I feel that the indentations on the body of the character is quite good well likes for example marking for where boots can go as well as gloves if I choose to them, I feel this makes the character a bit more realistic, especially as it gives more of an effect of clothing being worn.
Full Scenery 3DS
For the final scenery for this project I drew up the idea of having a back street alley way on the graphics tablet. Following very closely to that illustration, I made this in 3ds max, to make this I mostly used boxes however I did also use other things, such as editable polys, Boolean and extruding, this was to make some of the shapes look more realistic. I made each of the props and placed each of them to make it look like the alley way looked like a real one, to make it look dirty with boxes scattered. In addition I also included some other props like air con vents and drains as well to make it feel even more real in the final animation. In addition over the whole thing I only built as much as the camera would see, meaning I didn't make the buildings and other things oversized as the camera wouldn't see it anyway.
Character in Full Scenery
These are images of the character inside the scenery that I built for the animation, I put the character inside the of the scene to see what it would look like and to see if the character would look like it suits this kind of environment in addition to see any improvements need doing to make the scene look better or more suited to the character. In order to improve the scene for when I put the animation in the scene, I obviously need to sort out the lighting firstly. The lighting can decide the whole feel of a scene so I need to make the lighting more gloomy and less light in general , at the moment I think it kind of looks like the whole scene is in kind of a studio, and I want the whole feel of the scene to be like a dark alleyway where crime happens and to look dangerous. In addition I think that adding some more props like bottles, litter and maybe broken glass would make the whole scene feel more realistic as well.
First Attempt Animation
For my actual animation I want to do my character swinging the sword that I also made and possibly even animate an attack as well. This is my first animation that I made by importing my character into Mixamo and this gave it bones so I could Animate in 3DS Max. I think for a starting point the animation is okay, but I'd like the animation to be smoother and have more on it, in terms of like an actual attack just than the character raising the sword. At the moment I think the animation looks a bit laggy and not very realistic. As I have very limited time left to complete this project I may either download an animation off of mixamo and then just to animate the sword to move with the character because this way the animation will look smoother and more natural, in addition then I can just focus on the sword animation and the lighting for the scene so the scene looks more realistic.
Finished Animation (Not Rendered) + Process of Making
While it is not yet rendered, this is my finished animation. To make this I sculpted my character in Mudbox and attempted to texture it, however it did not work in Mudbox. Instead I imported the character in to 3ds Max, where I then started to create some extra accessories for the character to wear, this was the belt, arm guns and straps as well then colouring the character by converting the objects to editable polys and then texturing certain polygons, this may sound like it took a while however it did not take too long at all and it was also good because it meant I could be precise and was able to sill give the character skin colour on exposed areas and also have different parts of his suit different colours so it looked more like clothing. After I did all this I then imported the character without the sword into Mixamo, this allowed me to have bones in my character so when I tried to create my own animation I could move all parts of the body by moving the bones. However when I became short on time I decided to download a full animation off of Mixamo and just animate the sword in the characters hand. I tried attaching the sword actually to the character after it was imported but this deleted the animation so I animated the sword instead moving with the hands and arms, this took a while as I had to make sure the sword stayed in the characters hands which meant I had to individually move the sword on most key frames so it moved perfectly with the character and didn't look at the wrong angle either, however despite this I did you use auto key so every time I selected a new new position on the timeline and then moved the sword it would automatically create another key frame saving me time and just meant I could just get on with animating it. . Overall I think it came out look great and I think the character is definitely suited the scene as well along with the animation. The final things I need to do is set the lighting up properly and then render it to a high quality so it will look good when it is animated.
Rendering Final Animation
This is the process and settings I have used to render my final animation. For the render sequence itself I have set up multiple cameras, these are because my final piece for this project will be a range of clips in a show reel, each one from a different perspective but also kept short and in the eyes of a person also in the scene. For the render settings I have gone with using the art render on 1920 by 1080 as it is the best quality I can get without experiencing lag but is also really precise with my textures, and have selected the full range of 100 so it captures all the content I want and doesn't go too fast either. This way it will captures lots of renders in a folder which I can animate in Premier Pro in addition will be able to edit the clips if something goes wrong or changing and also putting the clips together so I can put them all in one show reel.
Camera Set Up for Final Animation
For my camera set up for this show-reel I have set up a range of different camera paths all captured by the physical camera as it works as well as the target one. For the actual footage I wanted to film the clips in the way that a person walking by would see the character in the scenery, So one of the shots is going down the pavement and the other so far is the camera moving across the road and ending up being fairly close to the character. I might have another shot of the camera going past the character and going down the alley way so you can not only see the character but the setting as well as it is nearly just as important as it still sets the scene of this character being in an alleyway. Overall I think these are good shots because they look like they from a person's perspective and will capture the content that I have made well as well as making the show-reel visually interesting.
Image above to the right - Camera Setup (3)
Image bottom right - Rendered Camera View
Final Animation of Assassin with Sword