2024 Final Major Project - Pre-Production
JP is an aspiring animator currently studying Creative Digital Media.
JP is an aspiring animator currently studying Creative Digital Media.
3D Models are necessary for a 3D animation however, for this animation, I did not want to spend much time doing my own modelling. This project for me is about creating an animation and developing my animation skills so I wanted to find models I could easily use rather than make them myself. I already knew of the software Makehuman and knew I was going to use that for the humans and as for everything else I knew websites like Sketchfab would contain free to use and useful models.
It is in my view that sound is necessary for a video in modern day and thus I must spend time collecting together sound effects and music I can use in the final animation. I want my film to be able to be viewable regardless of the watchers language and so I do not want to have much if any dialogue. Most of the sound in the film is thus environmental and foley. I knew of the website freesound.org beforehand and so based my needs on what is available on that website.
Animation is a very long process and it is hard to make final edits or reshoots in the way it may be easy to record new lines or footage in a live action film. Because of this it is important to plan out exactly what happens very early so that - in turn - you can properly test out and screen sequences and confirm all the minutia of the animation. A storyboard is a very useful item for this as they can be edited and created quickly. They consist of drawn frames with notes that describe movement. Often times in industry they will be acompanied with basic sound effects and voice overs however due to my animation having no dialogue I did not see this to be necessary - this translation of the drawn storyboards into a video is called an animatic.
In the original planning document for this dinosaur chase idea I wanted the final film to be around a minute and a half long in order to keep things in scope. I timed out the storyboard to roughly follow that but it turned out that this would add up to around two minutes long - which due to it not being longer I was fine with. This time changed slightly throughout production as I iterated on different shots, adding and taking away to their lengths so that specific scenes would flow better but trying to keep around two minutes.
Pre-visualisation - or previz for short - is a 3D form of an animatic often used in modern live action and expensive animated films. It acts like a storyboard in that it is quick to produce and only focuses on certain elements - such as general movements - rather than others such as visual complexity or beauty. Unlike a storyboard however it allows you to capture movement more easily as actual movement is happening on screen. it can also provide a basis to build proper scenes from and notify the creator if there are any things like models that they have forgotten. For instance, in making this previz, I realised I had not obtained a model for the nest Cate finds the egg in or the egg itself.