Contact - 3d Animated Music video from Nicholas Hodgson on Vimeo.
Wednesday 5 June 2013
Animation Reflection
Through this entire process I have painstakingly taken myself down a road that has taught me a huge amount. It enabled me to learn many different aspects of CG including cameras angles/shots, animation, modelling, sculpting, texturing, sculpting, retopology, lighting and finally compositing. All of these skills I practiced these skills not because I "had" to but because I genuinely was interested in them. I created this piece also not because I "had" to but because I had a true passion for the idea and and was more than determined to recreate my the idea I had in my head.
Probably one of the biggest driving forces for this animation was the fact that I absolutely love space. I have probably watched every space documentary ever made in the history of human creation. Something about it sends my imagination into overdrive. It is ultimately almost completely foreign to us. The vast expanse is virtually unlimited and I really loved the idea of exploring the unknown. For me I have always wondered what the future holds for humans. I know eventually we will run out of resources in this solar system and be forced to migrate to another planet (if we survive that long). This sparked my imagination because I wanted to portray what the planet would look like after such a time had passed, how would humans have evolved? All of these factors really played a huge role in how I created many of the scenes. For example, I wanted all the characters to wear the same outfits because in my mind humans no longer needed to breed and were instead all clones of one being. These kinds of ideas not only paint a vivid picture of the world but they also cut down on production times.
Music videos such as tool - schism and a few others were extremely influential because they were just so different and creepy. I really wanted to create something of a similar style and flavor.
Through this process I watched my work transform from something scribbled on paper into the final product you see before you. It has really taught me a lot about the production and steps involved in making a film entirely made in CG. I realize now that I needed much more planning with camera shots etc before I started modelling and animating. The reason for this was because I spent far too much time sketching out things inside my head. CG is time consuming and because of this it is really useful to know what exactly is going to be shown in detail on the camera. By knowing this you can dedicate your resources towards aspects that will have more attention. For example, I animated every single character in the window scene (scene5). If I had known that they would only be shown for a split second I would not have needed to do this and waste hours of my time.
Now you may be wondering how this animation is a system. I can tell you now that it is not finished. The original plan was to have the humans traveling to different planets destroying and polluting them as they traveled throughout the universe searching for new habitats. The system in my mind is similar to that of a virus spreading through the body. Just as a virus spreads to one cell, destroys it, and multiplies, so do the humans showing their greed for power and technology. It takes about 48 hours to render 6 seconds of footage so as you can imagine expanding the animation is just not possible in this time frame. You will also notice that the animation is in 720p and not 1080p, this is also because I simply did not have the time to render fullHD.
Due to the rushed nature of the project I feel as though many aspects could have been much more refined, such as the scene where the characters are animated in slow motion. I felt as though the shots did no transition very well together. It looked great in the playblast however when rendered it did not flow in my opinion. I would have wanted to match the beat of the music more with the changing of shots. This would have made the animation emphasize the music. After all I did want this to be a music video from the beginning and that is the main objective of the video.
Since I only had time for 1 render for each scene it meant that if any mistakes happened I would not be able to go back and re render. For many of the passes there are glitches and bugs, and also some of the self illumination is not showing in a few of the scenes. This was because I did not split up my render layers properly. Given more time I could easily re render these in full HD with no errors however at this stage its just not possible. However I am extremely pleased with the overall result of the final product.
Probably one of the biggest driving forces for this animation was the fact that I absolutely love space. I have probably watched every space documentary ever made in the history of human creation. Something about it sends my imagination into overdrive. It is ultimately almost completely foreign to us. The vast expanse is virtually unlimited and I really loved the idea of exploring the unknown. For me I have always wondered what the future holds for humans. I know eventually we will run out of resources in this solar system and be forced to migrate to another planet (if we survive that long). This sparked my imagination because I wanted to portray what the planet would look like after such a time had passed, how would humans have evolved? All of these factors really played a huge role in how I created many of the scenes. For example, I wanted all the characters to wear the same outfits because in my mind humans no longer needed to breed and were instead all clones of one being. These kinds of ideas not only paint a vivid picture of the world but they also cut down on production times.
Music videos such as tool - schism and a few others were extremely influential because they were just so different and creepy. I really wanted to create something of a similar style and flavor.
Through this process I watched my work transform from something scribbled on paper into the final product you see before you. It has really taught me a lot about the production and steps involved in making a film entirely made in CG. I realize now that I needed much more planning with camera shots etc before I started modelling and animating. The reason for this was because I spent far too much time sketching out things inside my head. CG is time consuming and because of this it is really useful to know what exactly is going to be shown in detail on the camera. By knowing this you can dedicate your resources towards aspects that will have more attention. For example, I animated every single character in the window scene (scene5). If I had known that they would only be shown for a split second I would not have needed to do this and waste hours of my time.
Now you may be wondering how this animation is a system. I can tell you now that it is not finished. The original plan was to have the humans traveling to different planets destroying and polluting them as they traveled throughout the universe searching for new habitats. The system in my mind is similar to that of a virus spreading through the body. Just as a virus spreads to one cell, destroys it, and multiplies, so do the humans showing their greed for power and technology. It takes about 48 hours to render 6 seconds of footage so as you can imagine expanding the animation is just not possible in this time frame. You will also notice that the animation is in 720p and not 1080p, this is also because I simply did not have the time to render fullHD.
Due to the rushed nature of the project I feel as though many aspects could have been much more refined, such as the scene where the characters are animated in slow motion. I felt as though the shots did no transition very well together. It looked great in the playblast however when rendered it did not flow in my opinion. I would have wanted to match the beat of the music more with the changing of shots. This would have made the animation emphasize the music. After all I did want this to be a music video from the beginning and that is the main objective of the video.
Since I only had time for 1 render for each scene it meant that if any mistakes happened I would not be able to go back and re render. For many of the passes there are glitches and bugs, and also some of the self illumination is not showing in a few of the scenes. This was because I did not split up my render layers properly. Given more time I could easily re render these in full HD with no errors however at this stage its just not possible. However I am extremely pleased with the overall result of the final product.
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