NAME: Joanne Teo (FAS00001OH)
PROJECT: Rigging & Animation Project (Summative)
DATE: 11/11/2015
CLASS: BAR06 3D Foundations
RATIONALE
Parodies are not a new invention but since the introduction of social media they have grown exponentially in popularity; there will hardly ever be a day without some mention of a meme that have become so integral in today’s pop culture conversations. That said, it’s easy to reimagine scenes from one medium to fit into the genre of another which is where Emelyn, a bright but struggling student trying to make ends meet by picking up the odd job here and there, comes in.
My development process included brainstorming different scenes to fit a genre shift and it wasn’t long before I settled for the iconic alien popping out of a person’s stomach and twisted it from a sci-fi horror into a dark comedy instead. I went through different ideas and peer consultations before settling on a girl jumping out of a cake prop, mostly due to the enthusiastic replies of my classmates.
I wasn’t aiming for realism when I designed Emelyn and was intent on using flat colours without any textures involved for a “doll” look but Keat suggested a texture for her clothes, skin, hair and even her bunny ears. UV texturing became a problem but the end result was rewarding although it did lend a bit of an uncanny feeling to the model which took a couple of days to warm up and get used to.
The coffin prop was a last minute addition as well as the cross on the wall, the former of which was a request from Keat. They added an extra appeal to the scene rather than the use of a flat 2D background. The coffin was originally roughly the same size as Emelyn but it kept disappearing behind the cake prop so I enlarged it until it was visible throughout the scene. It would be large enough to fit two Emelyn’s in there but in this case, artistic licensing was used to make the shots look nicer. I didn’t have enough time to include two flower pots so they were disregarded in the end for a higher priority.
I had originally planned to keep the animation as close to the storyboard as possible but consultations with Keat showed me a better way to go about animating certain scenes. I’d previously meant for the cake to shake before Emelyn jumps out of it but since the cake prop has a control for opening and closing, it looked better to make the lid rattle than to move the whole prop. This gave the scene a more appealing look and it allowed me to use the control on the cake to its full potential.
Her animation requires her to fling her arms out after she pops out of the cake and the original idea had her throw her arms upwards but I wanted her to spread her arms out horizontally in line to the cross on the wall behind her instead. I attempted this but the animation didn’t feel or look quite as appealing as what was drawn in the storyboard, and I also felt it might cross the line towards insensitive instead, considering that the setting is in a funeral home. This is the case where the original beats a different attempt. There was also a jump and settle of her body after she appears out of the cake which was a suggestion made by a peer. It gave her the look of stretching and bending her knees despite that the IK rigs on her legs were not used.
Lighting had its own difficulties to deal with but the inclusion of it made me reconsider the application of certain materials on the model. I changed the blinn texture meant to emulate silk and turned it into a lambert instead due to the plastic-look and unappealing way it shone under the spotlights. The matte appearance fitted better in the overall scene.
In regards to audio done in After Effects, I was only going to use the original audio from the chestburster scene but decided the silence leading up and after that felt too unnatural so I decided to use audio from freesounds.org to fill in the quiet parts with a murmur at the beginning followed the a rattle for the cake lid, the original audio mixed with a gasp and an outraged mumbling in the background. All in alI, I’m very happy with how the entire animation turned out in the end.
