Haunted Castle Ride Animation + Evaluation

My main ideas and intentions that I was trying to express in the project were: 

In this project my aim was to produce a 1 minute animation of a haunted castle ride to fit inside the Waverley theatre. This animation had to have a number of 3D modelled props and a minimum of between 2 and 3 scare scenes throughout. I wanted to keep the style quite simple but still show 3D skills I had learned in the module.

The methods I use to develop my ideas were: (brainstorming, , visual research, storyboards etc)

Firstly, I produced a couple of moodboards to explore the theme of haunted castle rides, as well as my original planned style of silhouettes. Throughout our Friday seminars with Yelena, we had small brainstorming sessions in our group to share and suggest how to enhance each other’s ideas for our animation. Just before completing the animation of my scene in 3DS max, I also produced a storyboard for the narrative of my final animation so I knew how it would pan out.

 

I took a risk by trying something new. (Explain):

I think my work is different to a lot of my peers’ due to my constant use of quite basic black shapes and silhouettes in my scene. I thought that taking the risk of using mainly 2D (extruded spline drawings) shapes in a 3D environment could be a simple but effective outcome in my animation.

Some of the unexpected problems I had to solve while working were:

It took me quite a while to get to grips with the idea of path constraints to make my cart and camera follow my track. However, after I had done this, I had to keep rotating my camera along the timeline to make it follow the track and look at my scare scenes, which took quite a few attempts to get right and kept seemingly moving by itself, which was rather frustrating. Another problem I faced was my environment background not appearing in my render output PNG files.

The decisions and choices I made to help solve these problems were:

I read through the tutorials for path constraints a few times and kept at it until I had done it correctly, and for the camera rotation I had to make sure I did it in order of the timeline to make it flow as I wanted and I had to remember to turn auto key off when not animating. To make my background appear in my animation, I had to render as high quality JPG files instead, which didn’t seem to affect my file size too much.

The things I have learnt from this particular project were: (Specific examples should be cited.)

I have learned how to use the slate material editor in 3DS max which I didn’t understand before and now find much simpler. I have also learned more about the different types of lighting in the software, which I found very confusing before and may have used the wrong type (photometric) in the past. I have also learned that moodboards, physical models and storyboard drawings are often vital in the design of a 3D environment or animation.

Areas for improvement , If I were to do this project again I would change or do differently:

I would probably spend more time on modelling 3D props a more realistic feel, as I feel my track and some of my props are slightly too simple or repetitive. I would also experiment with lighting much more if I had time, as I feel I just placed lights where I thought they were needed and didn’t really understand the rules of set lighting very well.

A new project that might grow out of my experience maybe:

I now feel that I have enough skills to produce quite effective animation projects by myself in my own time. Therefore, over the summer I plan to research more techniques and try to come up with my own project to improve my skills further and to add more work to my online portfolio.