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By Ethan Shilling - A Flock of Pixels - aflockofpixels.blogspot.com - Major Project

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Contents
Foreword Synopsis Character Development Story Development Production Process 5 7 9 29 35

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Foreword
This book takes a detailed look into the creative process behind creating the animated short, The Place Where Lost Things Go. Going behind the scenes will reveal how the animation was taken from its initial story idea, to the realisation of a memorable character and the world he lives in. The book also uncovers some of the technical challenges faced when using CG animation software, from rigging characters to the dynamic effects that supplemented the animation. Ethan Shilling

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Synopsis
Set in a other worldly space, a lonely monk must fulfil his task of returning lost things to the real world. Adventures await in the first episode of the new series, The Place Where Lost Things Go.

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Character Development

Having decided upon the concept of haveing a place where lost things go, the next critical thing was deciding upon a character who might work there.

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The Monk
The Monk was particularly fun to design; based off the patron saint of lost things, Saint Anthoney! The Monk could have looked very different had it not been for this one quick doodle!

As you can see, the final design hasnt strayed to far from the original!
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The Monk

- Initial Sketches

Yep, they look quite scary!

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The Monk -

First Paintings

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The Monk

- Refinement

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The Monk -

Details

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The Monk

- 2D to 3D

To prepare for the modelling process, detailed profile views of the character had to be made. The multi-coloured line drawing provided extra guidance when working out the shape of the body how the clothes overlay the arms and legs.

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The Monk

- 2D to 3D

Everything has to be modelled from scratch. The body was blocked out roughly first. Then the clothes were tackled. The last stage was to add in the details like the teeth.

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The Monk
To the right you can see the UV map for the clothing. The UV map is a 2D representation of the 3D object unwrapped. Textures can be painted on the map to add texture to the 3D mesh.

- 2D to 3D

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The Kitten
Unlike the Monk, the design of the Kitten didnt come so naturally. Even the final profile views dont represent the final kitten exactly. One of the main differences being the white chest and face, which were removed because it didnt look right on the model.

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The Kitten

- Reference

Reference material played a huge part in the design process. Plenty of kitten photos (and a few well known cartoon ones) were gathered and studied to understand their shape better.

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The Kitten -

Initial Sketches

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The Kitten -

Initial Sketches

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The Kitten

- Refinement

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The Kitten

- Refinement

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The Kitten

- Refinement

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The Kitten

- 2D to 3D

The kitten was modelled in a similar way to the monk. As you can see, the kitten was blocked out in sections and later joined together. The final stage was to clean up the joins.
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The Kitten

- 2D to 3D

The Kitten also had a UV map, although the texture map was kept simple. Most of the texture and shading effects you see were created with the help of a velvet shader! While I did experiment with fur, the results were less that satisfactory and needed a lot of time to render.

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Story Development
The story was the key to the whole project. While I had a rough idea of what I wanted, I never intended to introduce a second character, let alone it being a fluffy four legged character! Unlike many previous projects of mine, this animation was pre visualised roughly in CG before any animation was refined. During this process, the edit of the film was being tweaked constantly; several shots had to be changed slightly due to impracticalities of the original story board, so this was an invaluable step.

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Storyboards

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Storyboards

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Storyboards
Not all ideas that were drawn made it to the final cut. These boards were of scenes that never even made it to the animatic stage. You may notice that there is a shot of the kitten hopping into the monks sleeve on the previous page. This was omitted due to practical reasons.

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Storyboards
This was an alternate beginning, introducing the character differently.

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Production Process
The next stage of production involves rigging the characters in preparation for animation. This is the most technically challenging stage of the process.

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Character Rigging
Rigging is a process I always pay particular attention to. What you are seeing here are the controls around the mesh that allow the character to be animated in 3D. The Monk has so many controls that most of them would be hidden while animating the essential controls.

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Character Rigging
I wanted to keep the focus of the project as animation-centric as possible. Rather than simulating the monks clothing, I decided I wanted to be able to animate the clothes traditionally. This meant that the rig required extra controls. That in itself was a technically demanding challenge!

Before posing clothes

After posing clothes

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Character Rigging
The Monk required an extra level of interactivity, with this completely custom built UI written in the MEL scripting language. This is how I was able to manage all those controls!

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Drawings to Pre-vis to Animation

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Sets and Props

The story didnt require elaborate sets as such. The environment was made with the props that the character interacted with and unlike the character, the environment designs and general feel of the animation were developed during production.

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Sets and Props

A combination of custom MEL scripts, Maya Hair and Maya nCloth dynamics were used to duplicate and randomise the distribution of socks and coins. Including the randomised assignment of shaders.

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Tools of the Trade

No monk should be without these essential tools! Each of them had their own unique rig for animation. While the shovel was the most basic, the mop and broom had their own special controls for manipulating their ends.

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Tools of the Trade

All the tools used a simple IK rig. Additionally, the mop works so that all the strands are controlled globally by two control handles that can be scaled to spread the strands, positioned and rotated. The brush on the broom can be controlled similarly.

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Sets and Props

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Sets and Props

Multiple versions of the texture were made to randomise the crates.

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Look Development
Although each scene was lit individually, they all started with a template setup that I made to light the crates scene. Quite often the character was lit separately to the environment to achieve the best results as quickly as possible. More effects were added in post production to achieve the final look of the film.

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Additional Effects
Not everything could be animated traditionally. The puddle of ink and the candle flames were created with the dynamics systems available. While the ink splash looks simple enough, in order to control the simulation to produce the results I wanted, several cheats were used. For example, the particles that form the puddle were inside a very thin invisible cylinder to stop them moving about before impact. And an extra force field was used to push some particles into the air as the kitten leaps from the puddle. The candle flame was a dynamic soft body mesh. A mesh that is controlled by particle dynamics and springs. The final look of the candle was made with a glowing shader. The actual mesh was hidden!

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Title Development
One of the final parts of process was to construct a title sequence. I needed something simple, but still in keeping with the style of the animation. The sequence was pre-vised first, and then the graphics were added in later.

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Title Development

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By Ethan Shilling

A Flock of Pixels aflockofpixels.blogspot.com 2012