Production Still

Here I have made the production still that marks the finishing of this assignment. Rendered out of Maya with Mental Ray and touched up in Photoshop. The pose was done with deformers like the other poses I have created as I couldn't get my rig to work properly but it looks ok despite this.

Character Poses

A have made some poses with my character in Maya to bring him to life and further my understanding of how he is going to move.

Environment

Just a quick painting to depict a mood for my piece. Also has the only other character in my film.

Moodboard

Just a very quick mood board for my film made from some films that I have found have some good looking scenes I'd like to relate to my film.

Teddy

This is just a preview of the teddy bear that will appear in my production still.

Character Model

I have modelled my main character ready for the production still I have to create for this project. He is very very simple so it didn't push the boundaries of my modelling talent, but then I wanted a simple looking toy and that is what I have. I tried to rig him but have found it quite difficult due to the way I want him to move and also some deformation problems. I will rig him sometime in the future but until then I intend to pose him with deformers for the purpose of the still. But never mind all that, here he is...

Visuals

A couple of paintings for visualisation of the scenery. Enjoy...

Very Rough Storyboards

I have sketched up some very rough storyboards to see how I want some of the scenes to look like. After a few tweaks and some colour I'll have a finished storyboard very soon. I also need to make it a lot shorter as the idea wasn't supposed to exceed 12 drawings but I have gone up to 24, which shouldn't be too hard as it was only to give an idea of the flow of the story and not to show every single camera angle.

Screenplay

After reading Syd Field's 'Screenplay', I didn't feel that a lot of it was necessary for such a small piece of film but it did help a lot in giving me ideas on how to tell my story. I think that the story will definitely go over the 30 second time limit so I will have to see if I can condense it a little but I'm quite happy with it and don't really want to see any of it deleted.

I tried to make everything from the character designs to the actual story very simple because although the film doesn't have to be made for the project, I will be making it sometime in the summer. So although the screenplay may need some work, I am happy with how it came out...

Int – Toybox – Night

Toy lays as he has done for a long time, looking up at the stars and moons of the top of his prison, an old dusty toy box that he once called home but now longs to be free of. He looks across the large toy box (that seemed to get smaller every day he was confined there) to see something moving. Not having seen anything move in a long time he rushes over.

He sits looking expectantly at his old friend, a wooden doll not unlike himself (except she was a girl) who is showing very slight movements. The doll looks at Toy and reaches to his face when she slowly stops moving, and finally turns completely stiff. He touches her arm which is close to his face, it is stiff and shows no signs of moving.

He then looks around himself at all the lifeless toys around him and suddenly becomes away that he now lives in a giant graveyard of everything he knew. He knows now that he is the only one left, and given time he would soon share his old companions fate. With a look of urgency, he looks up at the opening to the toy box which seems very high and far away but not entirely unreachable.

He rushes, climbing over his other lifeless friends, all toys of the age. As he climbs over his friends and gets closer to the top, his climb becomes increasingly more dangerous as there are fewer and fewer toys to climb on. As his ground becomes more unstable he slowly reaches towards the top which is now merely an arms reach away.

Having reached the top he stands clumsily but sturdily on a small mound of toys at the top of the pile. His pile of toys is a little wobbly so he's careful about his footing. He can now touch the top with his hands, and in his increasing excitement and urgency pushes with all his strength at the top of the box (which now looks a lot less mesmerizing as it did from the bottom now you can see all the marks and chipped paintwork). He strains as the seemingly immovable weight on top of him refuses to budge. As he reaches the peak of his strength he sees the slightest glimmer of light appear from a crack in the lid he has made as his strength pushed the lid so slightly upwards. Just as he wonders at the real light he had not seen in so many years, the mount of toys under his feet start to topple and our hero loses his balance.

He falls (first in slow motions then at an increased speed) all the way to the bottom where he had started, only this time he was underneath a mound of toys. He tries to lift them off when he looks slowly to his right to see that his right arm had broken during the fall. He shows no sign of pain, but clear sadness as he realises that without his arm he will not be able to lift the toys from on top of him let alone lift the lid of his soon to become resting place.

He lays for a long time and slowly his will to move diminished like so many of his fellow toys. He looks to his left (with the small amount of energy he has left) to see that he can no longer move his left arm. He relaxes knowing it not long until he will soon be free of his prison.

He looks up at the stars and moons of his sky and everything becomes very bright. He welcomes this with a smile. As everything becomes very bright he thinks about the times when he was the favourite toy and was played with everyday.

Fade to White

The scene ends with our hero not moving, but with a smile among his face, the same colour mood as the rest of the toys, now all mere objects that would never move again. (In the style of a stylized painting.)

Character Sketches

After completing my character history I thought it necessary to sketch up my final character designs so here are some very rough sketches and some different colours.

Character History

I have written up a character history for my character, a necessary chore before writing a screenplay. I also added cheeky little sketch of my character that may the be final design.

The main character is a toy and like many toys, way never given a name. He was handmade and painted by and old toymaker in the early 1910's who never replicated any of his designs and is as such, unique. He is basic in design like so many toys of the time, and was sold to a young girl. He was one of the favourites and so was full of life, far more than the rest of his fellow toys. When no human was around they would observe their surroundings, making new discoveries. Being of a simple nature they knew nothing of the world and so everything they saw was a new discovery, which made everything very interesting and made the toys (especially our hero) very inquisitive. When he slept, he slept with all the other toys (unless his owner was being particularly messy and leaving them all out) in a bright blue toy box littered with yellow stars and moons. He lived this happy life for five years before he was played with less and less as his owner grew up. He was cast aside like many other toys into the toy box which was opened less frequently all the time until eventually the lid never rose again.

He now lives in the same place he has lived for years, in an old dusty toy box in an attic which has laid untouched for many years. Our protagonist was once one of the favourites, which shows on his body as he is covered with scratches and the paint worn from overuse. Around him are all his old companions, also toys, who now no longer have the ability to move like he has. The longer they were all ignored, the quicker their life began to diminish as one by one they eventually just stopped moving leaving our protagonist the only one alive, and his time is almost up.

Our heroes only memory is of a young girl who used play with him often. Being of a basic nature, our hero has no idea that the young girl he once knew has long since grown old and forgotten about him. And so he sits and waits for the roof of his cage to open, letting in a flood of light and restore the life of him and his companion toys.

Environment Finished

I spent some time making my environment a little better, just by adding a better lighting scheme and using an ambient occlusion shader.

Here it is...

Narrative Brief

I have a brief to write a narrative for a 30 second piece. I have had many idea and narrowed them down to three. I have had a hard time deciding which of them I will choose so I have done some artwork for each in hopes that it will help me decide which of them will look any good.

Business Time

A man walks into his house, stands in the doorway for a moment then slowly enters his house. He flashes back at the the day that has just passed. He thinks of the man that abused him on the bus, he drops his briefcase and a pink slip falls out as he flashes back to his boss telling him that he is sacked for sending out abusive emails to his co-workers under a false name. He sees a picture of his ex-wife and child, and flashes back to when she left with his child and another man. He walks through his dark home to a full length mirror at the end of the corridor. He stares at himself for a while and pulls his tie from his neck. He holds his tie in-between his two hands, and with a swift motion he holds the tie tightly between his fists. With a look of malice in his eyes he slowly lifts the tie up to his forehead and ties it at the back of his head. He stands as a silhouette against the light as he heads to avenge himself.

The Great Train Robbery

Two robbers at the end of a daring robbery aboard a huge space train are escaping. It has all gone wrong and they are running from the law when they manage to get aboard their small cruising vessel, not before blocking their exit to their enemies with a stick of atomic dynamite. As they are escaping there is a huge explosion on the train and they know that finally they are safe. The older more experienced of the two leers at the younger one as if to place the blame. The younger knowing that he has done wrong, looks down to his feet. He looks up again to he his older counterpart smiling in a cheeky, and out of his coat he pulls out a big bar of solid gold. The young lad looks with shock at the slyness of his master and also amazement at the beauty of the gold bar. They look at each other and laugh as their shuttle flies into the deep darkness of space.

Toybox

In an old attic, a toybox full of toys past their years lay forgotten. Where they used to be full of life, most of them have lost their ability to move. Our protagonist lays amongst the others, not yet completely void of life like so many of the others. Knowing that the end is near he gathers all of his strength and crawls over all the toys to get to the lid. He stands atop a not so sturdy bundle of toys and pushes with all his might, until when one of his feet slip he falls and ends up half buried under a heap of his old, immobile friends.
Time passes and the toy knows he cannot move from his soon to be grave so he sits and waits as dust and cobwebs settle around him. He stirs for the last time as he finds most parts of his body he can no longer move. He looks up at the lid, covered with painted stars and moons and finds hid eyesight blurring, and in his last moment of life he sees a white light appearing above him. He becomes peaceful and accepts his fate as he watches the good parts of his life flash before him.

I think that of all these idea I like 'Toybox' the most. It has the most story to it and will really allow me to get alot of practice in character animation as there will be no dialogue so the story will have to be told with motion.
The 'Business Time' idea wont keep people interested for long enough. Although ti might be funny, I dont think it has much of a story to it and some parts of it a very cliche. Also I want to work in CG and with the colour schemes and stlye it would work better in 2D.
The 'Great Train Robbery' idea is actually my favourite. I think it would be fun to mix sci-fi with western in a comedic style, but I think it will be very difficult to produce in the small ammount of time I have wheras the toys in 'Toybox' will need very simple modelling and not much environment.

So with this in mind i'm going to do some more work for 'Toybox' to get a more of an idea of what I want it look like and maybe even draw up a storyboard.

Odd Bits 'n' Bobs

A little humanoid jump, just more practice.





Just a little practice animation I did a while back to improve my skills.

Got any jumper cables?

Welcome to the blog of James Daly, Animation student at the University of Lincoln.

As a way to jump start this hootenanny of a blog i'll show my finished environment project. The idea was to create a 'mise en scene' which I decided to do almost entirely in CG. This is my first real piece of work since learning how to use Maya which may indicate why i'm not entirely satisfied with the piece, but nonetheless it was still a huge learning experience.

I wanted my piece to have film noir theme and knowing my experience with he software wouldn't allow for a realistic looking piece I gave it a cartoony feel, not unlike "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"
I am quite pleased with work I did and given more time I think there's a lot more I can do with it.

Here is a still of the scene,



















Here are some of the pre-production paintings.