Timeline
- May - Aug 2022
Project Context
- Creating a short animation film for an Animation course at Simon Fraser University
- Tools Used : Autodesk Maya, Adobe Premiere Pro (Post Production ONLY)
My Role
- Animation
- Designer
-3D Modeling
- Post Production Editing (Video & Audio)
THE IDEA
A Doll Coming To Life
“Build-A-Friend” is a playful yet slightly curious short 3D animation story about a small pink robot rabbit who awakes to explore its surroundings on a workbench; encountering various objects from nuts to bolts and even what appears to be a broken leg that looks similar to its own. As the pink robot rabbit continues exploring the workbench area, it eventually discovers a broken fellow blue robot rabbit who happens to be missing a leg. The pink robot rabbit proceeds to piece two and two together, ultimately ‘creating’ a newfound friendship between both rabbits. However, as the blue robot rabbit is about to shake hands to thank the pink robot rabbit for fixing its leg, another broken robot rabbit— a yellow one— 'drops in' suddenly. Both robot rabbits look at the yellow robot curiously before nodding at each other, ending the animation story— or is the actual story only starting now?
3D Modeling & Scene Creation
After the storyboard was finalized. Our team broke into individual roles, and I was responsible for creating the scene, atmosphere, and several 3D Objects based on our concept. After objects were created, it is then passed onto another groupmate that's in charge of textures. Here are several objects that I've created.
Animation, Camera, Action !
After all objects had been properly textured and rigged, I started to animate the toys moving and placing the cameras according to the storyboard. After all shots were successfully recorded and rendered via Maya, I compiled all the shots into one video in Premiere Pro, edited it and added music & SFX to the video.
Conclusion & Reflection
Overall, Build-A-Friend has proven to me that I am able to create and work within the ecosystem of Maya. I had learnt a lot in terms of model making, animation, and body rigging in particular, as during the project creation process, we had learnt that if rigging isn't done properly, animations will appear stiff, unnatural, and may even encounter body matrixes and glitches.
A challenge that I faced whilst working on this project was proper texturing. If objects had simple designs, such as most props in this project, it won't be an issue. However models with complex body types and colors would start to become an issue, particularly if the object isn't created properly, UV Editor would break apart the model and display a jumble of tiny textures, and make the texturing process an extreme pain. In the end, this would be the biggest takeaway from this project and class.
