CGT341 Fall 2008 Project

Short animated film
Create a short animated film to be submitted to an animation festival. The film should feature at least two characters interacting with each other. Adherence to the principles of animation should be clearly recognizable.

Duration: Do not exceed 1 minute

Guidelines:

1. Story development.
Remember: outstanding animation and breathtaking visual effects will not save a bad story.

• Research story ideas
• Create the premise
• Use the three-act structure to flesh out the premise into a 1-2 page draft

2. Character design.
Remember: good characters are essential to any successful 3D animated story. Design your characters as if they were actors who are perfect for the role in your animation. The more you know your characters, the better you can animate them for the most believability and emotional impact.

• Write a short description of your characters (1-2 paragraphs long). List their main personality traits.
• Give your characters a history. Take your characters' descriptions and flesh them out into full-fledged biographies. (1-2 pages long)
• Create rough sketches of your character. Draw at least 10 different gesture-type versions (2-3 inches tall). Experiment with proportions of body parts, head shapes, clothing, postures. To facilitate this process, in your sketchbook, create a visual library of different body part types. Use pictures of real animals, plants, people for a variety of ideas. Use a clearly recognizable visual theme.

1. Before producing the final version of your characters, review the preliminary sketches, character descriptions and history and make good design decisions:

a. Make sure your characters are not anatomically difficult or even impossible to animate. Study anatomy books on animals and humans to understand how they are built to move.

b. Consider the limitations of your software and hardware. Use the strong points of your software to your advantage and design around the weak spots.

c. Remember that simplicity is key to designing good characters. Many times , the most amazing characters turn out to be the easiest to construct.

• Create the final character drawings. Draw 5-8 “Character Turnarounds” (in color) showing the key features of the character from different points of view. Create at least 2 “Character Sheets” showing the main emotions and attitudes of the character in the form of body positions, shapes and silhouette, facial expressions, hand gestures, way of moving.

3. Script Development. Write the script and test its effectiveness and visual potential by creating a large number of thumbnails. (keep the thumbnails one to two inches across and fit as many as you can on a single page).

4. Storyboard Development.Turn the chosen thumbnails into final presentation storyboard panels.

5. Character Modeling. Model your characters using a variety of techniques learned during previous courses.

6. Character Rigging. Set up the characters for animation using a combination of FK and IK. Test your characters for deformation and motion.

7. Character Controls. Create character controls for motion, facial animation and dialogue.

8. Secondary Modeling. Model and texture secondary objects and characters required for each scene.

9. Animatic. Combine storyboard panels, soundtrack, dialogue and rough motion tests to create the animatic.

10. Scene Layout. Prepare the layout of each scene (camera and lighting setup).

11. Motion Studies. Study the motion of your characters carefully. Collect reference material and develop a series of motion tests. You might need to act out some of the sequences.

12. Animation. Animate each scene. (techniques and tools to be used: keyframe animation, reactive animation, IK, FK, constraints, clusters, blendshapes). Demonstrate adherence to the principles of animation.

13. Testing.

14. Rendering.

15. Post and Compositing.

Team/company www site:

• Web-based information site
• Must include:
• Project welcome page
• Biography page
• Milestones--images and animated clips-- (Maya files need to be submitted to the G drive)
• Lab assignments -- Final animations only-- (Maya files need to be submitted to the G drive)
• The materials for the final presentation must be posted on the web site and must include:
• Breakdown of what each person accomplished for the project
• Script
• All pre-production sketches and studies
• Storyboard
• Selected renders of characters and environments
• Animatics, motion studies and animation tests
• Final animation (compressed for web delivery)

• Any group that does not have a finished product at presentation time will fail the course as a group.
• Any group with a team member missing from a presentation will drop a whole letter grade for the course

Submit:

· Script (on CD)

· Characters' descriptions and biographies (on CD).

· Character Sheets and character turnarounds (on sketchbook).

· Preliminary thumbnails (on sketchbook)

· Storyboard panels (hand drawn, in color, on storyboard sheets).

· Animatic (on CD).

· Final scene files (on CD). Each scene of the animation should be saved as a separate maya file and named using a naming convention that is easy to understand. Each character should be saved as a separate maya file. Character files should include the character model, character stand-in, and character rig with all the animation controls (blenshapes included).Note: Do not forget to create project folders.

· At least 5 renderings of each character (including details) TIFF or TGA 720x480 (on CD).

· AVI 720x480 of the final sequence, 30 fps (on CD) Compressed!

Software:

· Use any 3D software package for secondary modeling. (all models need to be imported in Maya 8.5/2008)

· Use Maya 8.5/2008 for character setup, animation, scene layout and final rendering.

· Use any 2D software package to create textures, backgrounds, etc.

· Use any sound editing software package to record and edit dialogue and soundtrack.

· Use any video editing software to composite the final sequence.