Lost in Japan

“Lost in Japan” – Group 3D Narrative Animation

For the group 3D Narrative Animation, we were tasked with making a story using the 3D animation skills we learned the previous 5 months. I was the leader for my group, and we wanted do create something visually pleasing, incorporates lighting, and 2D animation. So we came up with the concept of doing a night scene at a Japanese Festival. Since we did not want to reuse any of our individual character models, we decided on a plot that minimized the amount of work we had to do.

Spoilers: We have two main characters. A thief is at the festival planning to steal the sacred sword on display using the busy night and fireworks as cover. He meticulously planned to steal the sword once the fireworks go off, but when he reaches for the sword, the samurai statue holding the sword comes to life, and chases the thief throughout the festival. The two face people and buildings as their obstacles, and eventually have a face-off at the dock. The thief gets by and gets away by jumping into the sea.

We had four weeks to complete the project. We first created the story board together, including a map, since the plot heavily relied on the setting of the festival.

Then we designated different tasks to each member, so that everyone could work one different parts at the same time. Our different roles consisted of:

character modeling
building modeling
modeling texturing and painting
character rigging
setting assembly + lighting
sound design
2D animation
3D animation
End credits

It was a difficult project because our group wanted to create a production that was near-impossible for the amount of time we had to finish it, in addition, we could only work on it during class since we did not have the programs at home. We ran into many issues from UV mappings, to renders failing, lighting, and so on. But when we finished we were very happy with our final product. We jokingly named the project at the beginning Lost in Japan based off of the Shawn Mendes song, and so we had to incorporate it in the ending credits. This project was extremely rewarding, useful, and fun, I am glad I got to learn how real animated films work start to finish from communication to the more technical skills.