Zenith

This project was a final end of the year piece of work that was focused on what ever we wanted to improve from our time in freestyle. There was also an emphasis on developing our 21st century skills and it was also meant to be a passion project as there was no other instruction for the project except to have it relate to animation in some sense and in has to show of my 21st century skills.

 The first step of creating any good atmospheric film or animation in which the goal is to elicit specific emotions out of its audience is the planning stages of how the character will move around the environment. Early on I knew that I wanted my character to be walking around tight hallways that look similar to storage crates from the inside.

From the beginning, I also knew I wanted there to be two main phases of the animation: The halls and the dystopian dreamscape. What I had a hard time grasping was the difficulty of combining these settings into one coherent animation. I did however settle on using gravity to somehow transport my character from the halls into the dreamscape.

 I did the project entirely solo with little to no help from others, partially because I was the only one that could hold the concept of the story in my head without altering it in a way I didn’t envision originality for the project, and also because it was organized chaos creating the animation. The one collaboration I can think of is using a free character model I downloaded instead of sculpted, but either way, this project was designed to be done solo.

The skill I have improved on the most is working with hyper shade in Autodesk Maya, not only to apply and manipulate the textures of the imported assets, but also to use 3d lights to cast shadows on the characters, and other inanimate objects in the scene to create depth and mood throughout the animation. Manipulating this lighting engine was one of the most important things to do to create something unsettling because most fear comes from the things you can’t see rather than what you can. I learned this while doing an early render of one of my scenes with the lighting engine not accounting for shadows, and the entire scene lost the atmosphere that I had envisioned. 

This project has definitely fulfilled my expectations as one of the best animations I have produced in freestyle. Comparing my work from the start of the year to what I have done now, The change is completely night and day. I have learned more than I ever thought I would from 3d animation and it has given me the power to create whatever I want through a very forgiving art form. The main thing I have learned from 3d animation is immense patience and persistence. The programs we worked with were difficult to learn and use proficiently, but in the end, it is worth it because you8 are able to create something you never would have been able to without the utilization of these programs. These are definitely values I can apply to other aspects of life and will help me on projects in college and beyond. Something I would do differently is use more models from the internet. At first glance, this may seem like cutting corners but all it comes down to is time management. The more time I can a lot to rendering the animation, the more animation there will be. I spent more time making the models and texturing them than I spent rendering, animating, and editing them combined. Next time I would use my time more wisely and use pre made assets for a lot more time to create an immersive animation. 

 A final thought goes to all people that are in animation or are thinking about doing it in the future. My advice to you is to cut as many corners as possible. This isn’t because it is easier, but it is because doing this will allow you to focus more on the story and concept of the animation, rather than the technical side of modeling texturing and rendering. If there is an easier way to do something for animation, don’t hesitate to use it because that is the most efficient and responsible way to use your time.

Final Animation:

Process Video: