Below is a brief breakdown of what I am planning for this semester. It isn't completely set in stone. I am known for pivoting my direction on a whim, especially in the early stages of production. However, this is basically the plan:
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What is it?
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A 3D animated short (series of shorts if I have enough time)
Made in Blender
Revolves around a small crew traveling through space
Featuring a spaceship that will transform into a giant robot
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What do I hope to incorporate into it/What’s new?
Character animation - Working with face rigs
VFX Work - Lasers, explosions, and other special effect elements
Environments - Planets, Asteroids, Using Geometry Nodes to create cool things in space.
Dynamic Camera Movement - Experimenting with different, dynamic shot types and camera tools
Character Design - With a story set in space, characters can have greater variation between them
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Why now?
Last semester, I spent so much time learning the ins and outs of Blender and improving my workflow that now I can start to spread my wings a bit. I want to branch out to a more FUN area of work and explore a realm outside of my anxiety-ridden, stress-filled mind.
I think that looking at some other areas of 3D modeling and animation will help me improve while also giving me the opportunity to build out my portfolio.
I have a little bit better understanding of where to start this project so that I can keep working on it without a major “crisis of faith” moment every other week.
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Where do I begin?
I haven’t written the story yet, but I have some general key elements that I want to incorporate as I begin writing some drafts over the next few weeks. In the meantime, I will be using the 3D modeling course to keep myself working in Blender and creating assets or learning new things every week.
I have already started designing the ship that the main characters will be flying in, this also means that I have a general idea of the artistic influences that I want to use as the basis for the visual elements.
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When will it be finished?
Ideally, I will have at least one animated short done by the end of the semester, if not more. I am extremely optimistic about this project and think that I can make some great progress in a relatively short amount of time, especially since the workload this semester seems like it will be much less than the previous.
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What about that other thing I was working on?
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I am scaling back my project from last semester so that I can finish it to some extent. I realized not long before break that one of the biggest problems with the piece was that all of the subtext was on the surface while the surface-level story elements were completely missing.
Rather than completely revamping the story, I am going to take one part of the original plan and make it into something slightly different. Where the original piece was going to look at things like loss, regret, self-loathing, etc; the new direction is NOSTALGIA.
This new direction seems like the best way to go in order to still capture that original old-school stop-motion look I wanted to achieve.
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The Revamped work will be something like this: A black and white digital 2D animation. The un-named main character is walking on the sidewalk and sees a colored light shining from the window of a neighborhood home. He stops, looks through the window, and he turns into a 3D puppet/doll. The camera moves to the interior of the house and we see a retro 50s-60s home with a parent reading the newspaper as children sit too close to the television. Just after we’ve had enough time to get engrossed in the environment, the color starts to fade and the characters lose their 3rd dimension. Where there was a father reading the newspaper, is now a father scrolling through his phone. Where the kids were glued to the TV, they are now glued to an iPad.
The piece isn’t meant to show that things used to be better… it’s meant to highlight that, though the times have changed, people are still the same. Engaging with media whenever they are given the chance, no matter the format.
By switching to 2D for a chunk of the piece (which is already scaled back from its original length) I can even work on it while rendering my 3D work. Plus, the foundation for the 3D part is still there. What I need to do is add in some more props, finish characters, animate the character movements, and composite it with the 2D transitions. I am actually feeling really good about this new direction.
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What can I do to keep steady progress this semester?
First, by connecting my studio project with some of the work I will be doing in my practicum, I can kill two birds with one stone.
Second, I am looking at some Project Management software right now. I used Jira in the past, but it is geared towards working in groups and I really would prefer something simple for solo-work. Maybe I’ll just get a whiteboard and some notecards to put above my computer monitors.