3D Stop Motion Animation

Our third animation assignment this semester, this time we had to produce a 3D stop motion animation. It had to be over one minute long, have a clear storyline, have a theme that was specified on the brief and said we would have to design and create the puppets ourselves. We decided to work with people we hadn't worked with very much before and so me and George said goodbye to Bas and Stuart, and said hello to Lisa and Christina.

Our group sat down for a couple of hours and attempted to come up with story lines that could fit the themes of particular interest which were 'Time', 'The Experiment', and 'The Illusion'. Here are a couple of very basic ideas i came up with.

Plans for a fountain of youth in 'The Illusion' theme

Plans for an environmental story for the theme of 'Time'

These stories were eventually scrapped as our group started to collaborate our ideas and realised that time would be the best theme as it included the possibilities of a time machine. However, we soon realised we still didn't have a story and instead decided to come up with some characters and then build a story around them. We knew we wanted a scientist as the main character but apart from that we were clueless. I proposed we had an assistant and kept pushing this idea as i felt it would be a good opportunity to animate characters interacting which one another. Soon the group warmed to the idea and designs for the eassistant started to appear. Here are the designs i came up with for the assistant.

My assistants, young rocker and thin female

 These designs included a female assistant who just wanted to please the scientist and was treated badly (bottom left) and Lisa came came up with the idea of a male assistant, perhaps his son, who i designed as a long haired rocker who didn't particularly care about the experiments and just wanted to get out of the lab. I particularly liked the female assistant as i thought she looked interesting and her personality could work well with a bossy scientist. Unfortunately no one else seemed to be very impressed with her and so she was rejected. After a little while George noticed the animal like doodle i drew on the left of the page and proposed i design a character similar to that- a pretty female assistant who might have been experimented on by the scientist. Jumping at the chance to include a character that followed my own style, i dug up an old character i designed a few months earlier and started to mold her into the assistant. Here are a few plans

Some designs from the character i dug up

After a couple pages of designs i remembered the assistants that had been rejected earlier, i liked the female's outfit, especially the long black boots and gloves and i liked the son's grumpy attitude and so incorporated these elements into the new assistant. She would be glamorous and attractive with a rabbit tail and ears, giving her a 'playboy bunny' look, but without the smile and charming personality. She didn't enjoy working for the scientist, but being his creation, had to help him with his experiments which makes her indifferent and placid in a lot of situations. Here is the final design that everyone was happy with.

Sorry for the poor quality photo

We storyboarded for a little while and managed to come up with a strong storyline. We realised something was missing though and so designed another character that would help bring more comedy to the animation and the cat was born! Originally the cat would be designed and animated by Lisa but due to illness, Christina took this role and instead Lisa provided us with a more in detail storyboard.

Next we moved onto creating our puppets and set, two things i was not looking forward to but ended up really enjoying. Firstly we got the bare walls of our set made and started to paint them, although it soon became apparent that some people can't paint to save their lives, I'll give you a hint who that was... me. However! My skills were needed elsewhere anyway as our armatures needed to be created and so myself and Christina went to the 3D studio to learn how to make them. We quickly picked it up and together we created the assistant, the cat and the scientist in a few days.

Our back wall

This is death, he was cold so we warmed him up

We sold this to a gallery for £1 mill afterwards

Bunny assistant turnaround with brass tubing plans

Armature at the end of the day

Getting ready to be foamed up

Bunny assistant foam body and ears!

Cat and Scientist foamed up and ready to go  (Hey Cassie)

 Next we designed some posters for the background of the set as the 3D studio was closed and the animation room where our set was had been locked. We decided to keep the posters humorous and so included re-designs of classic posters such as the kitten on a washing line and some just plain silly posters like a troll face. We also drew our characters for portraits that would hang on the east wall that George and Christina painted.

Posters

More posters

Assistant, Scientist and Cat portraits

 That's enough for this post, more 3D stop motion animation work will be posted soon!