PLANNING OVERVIEW

Methodology

My design process was concerned with the creation and development of ideas translating into the final artefact with less emphasis on the technologies responsible for realizing the artefact. With concerning the nature of the project, there is a fine line between creative design and technological design (or technological ability), that is to say one will not be complete without the other. Although my design methodology is ‘creative’ and my approach is from an artists point of view it would be foolish to think that there is no technological design involved in the project. I will not concentrate on how the technology behind creating the artefact functions but on the creative skills I used to produce my artefact.

A CREATIVE APPROACH -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1) Concept - My approach was loosely based around the design processes adopted by Pixar and Blue Sky Studios. Each company devised their own system of working and I took it upon myself to do the same. Both companies begin with the story. I on the other hand began with the concept ideas and designs and created a story based on the ideas. I chose the characters from my sketches and gave them names before anything else. This way they had already been established, but it was up to me to find them a place in the film. Please click here to see some of the concept designs.

2) Story - The story evolved from the ‘Tin Bear’ idea (please see ‘concept ideas’ section) where a robot is trying to commit suicide. I began to plan the world this robot would inhabit by drafting the colours; the shapes and the atmosphere. Below is the treatment for the idea I wrote before developing the film,

“We open to a pitch black frame and slowly a light appears. As we get closer to the light we become aware that it is the reflection of the moon on the tainted blue ocean almost black in the night. On the edge of a cliff a robot stands and hangs his head. He is named Juniper and is the last robot alive in Ravensville, the town he and his kind have come to embrace. With him stands the last living tree abandoned on a cliff on the outskirts of the town. He too is tired and just waiting to die. Juniper lunges into the air and crashes into the dark abyss below.

In a cloudy bleak mist we see light flickering off an object. Juniper walks over to the light and we see a large clear globe embedded in the ocean floor. Juniper hesitates but the beauty of the glass globe arouses his curiousness. As he reaches to touch the globe, he suddenly pulls away and looks around. He sees nothing. His obsession with the globe grows until finally he stretches his arm and touches its glistening surface. Instantly a deep yellow light surrounds the globe and a beam shoots out and pierces the clouds above. A gun drops down from the clouds and following the line of the yellow beam hits the ocean and hovers a few feet above the globe. Juniper swiftly grasps the gun and keeps it with him. The gun was sent from above, from his dead friends and family to kill Jed the scientist who wiped out the entire robot race. With a new found liveliness Juniper swims to the surface, pushes out of the water and hurries to the tower where he knows he shall find Jed.

He fly’s across the deserted streets of Ravensville and past a poster, crinkled and dirty barely hanging on the wall. It reads ‘Jed - Wanted for Mass Murder’. Inside the tower and Juniper appears at the bottom of the long winding stairs leading to Jed. He goes up the stairs and comes to a large empty room almost black except for a series of lights lighting an object in the distance. Juniper investigates and finds an electric chair for robots used by Jed to kill a number of his kind. He stops for a second and sighs, and then raises his head in anger and blasts into off.

He comes to a room lit only by the misty fog from behind the steel-barred window high above the floor. The room is filled with hooks and torture devices. He sees a figure hanging in the corner and another suspended over a set of spikes. As he gets closer he realizes the hanging robot to his left is dead. The other seems to be moving, he may be alive. He walks over to the suspended robot and his footsteps echo in the large room. The tortured robot lifts his head. He hasn’t enough energy to speak but Juniper knows he is pain. To move the heavy set of spikes beneath the robot, Juniper uses the flame from his jetpack. Then with the immediate danger removed Juniper retrieves the gun he found in the ocean and shoots down the shackles holding the tortured robot.

At the end of a long dark corridor there is a door. Above it a sign reads ‘Robot Morgue’. We enter the morgue and find a number of dead robots on a perfect arrangement of tables. The room is cold and misty. At the front of the room stands Jed watching over his triumphs, the dead bodies of the robots he had tortured and killed. Then out of the corner oh his eye, Jed spots two eyes peering at him from above. On the chandelier in the centre of the room hangs Juniper. They stare at each other intensely. Juniper flies down and stands parallel to Jed. They both know they will fight, but Juniper out of respect for the dead, signals to Jed that they must go outside to do battle as he does not want to disrupt the sleeping of the dead. Jed agrees. In his mind Juniper will be the last of his victims, where he kills him is irrelevant.

They line up outside with their eyes glued to one another. They stand about 10 meters away from each other. Juniper clenches his gun as Jed clenches his fist. Then suddenly a shot is fired from the gun. Jed not fazed by the bullet uses his powers to stop the bullet and reduce it to dust. He smiles at Juniper’s pathetic attempt. He rises from the ground and launches two fireballs at Juniper who hasn’t enough time to react. They strike Juniper on the chest and throw him back scrapping his hard body against the cold concrete floor. He appears lifeless on the ground. Jed walks over to confirm the kill. H e thinks Juniper is dead and turns his back with a smile on his face. Then Juniper rises and punches Jed launching him into the air. He hits the ground hard and we fade to black.

The figures reappear as toys and we pan out of a shoe box to reveal a child’s room. The child sits at the foot of his bed reading a book. It is titles ‘The adventures of Juniper the Robot’. We become aware that the story is in the imagination of the child. And these characters only exist in literature.”

3) Storyboards – This is the natural stage after the story and characters have been established. Here the plot is visualized, an important step in the development of the look of the film. The storyboards capture a succession of ‘comic-book’ style simplistic renditions of what the film will look like. I drew the storyboards as a ‘map’ guiding the direction of the film, how characters will be presented and how they interact with the surroundings and with each other. My storyboards do not include the end on the film or the title sequence as these were not decided until later on in the making section. The storyboards allowed me to document how I envisioned the world in my head for the first time. The sets and characters were roughly drawn but to a level where I could easily refer back to the storyboards if I am troubled on how to link or style scenes. In industry, the storyboard is usually done in a team where each tem member creates different parts and then pitches it to the Director. As I was both the director and the storyboards artist I presented mine to my supervisor Fred Weimer and some friends on the course to get their feedback before developing the idea into the 3D film. The features I tried to portray with my storyboards (in a basic format) were camera angles, lighting and the positioning of characters. To jump to the storyboards please click here.

4) Finalize Drawings – I introduced this step to ensure that all my ideas and drawing were finalized before modelling had begun. The mood, tone, environment and direction of the film had to be evident in the designs. The movie was intended to be quirky and surreal and so the objects in the movie had to reflect this. The sets and props were developed and the lead characters were drawn in detail to translate their personalities onto the page. To finalize the characters I often made a quick 3D mock up to see how the object would look from certain angles. The finalized drawing can be found in the ‘final ideas and world design’ section. The only aspect of the characters that wasn’t finalized was their colour and surface details. This was later developed once modelling was underway. Textures were designed in both Adobe Photoshop and 3D Studio Max (please see making, ‘texturing’ section for more details)..

5) Modelling and Texturing – Once I was satisfied with all the drawings I began modelling each scene of the film essentially converting 2D into 3D. I began by modelling and lighting the environment and then merging individual objects into the scene. Although in industry 3D clay models are sometimes carved and scanned to form the armature of the 3D models, I did not have these facilities and modelled the various objects directly into 3D by referencing my sketches. At this stage I experimented with rigging (adding a fully customized animated skeleton to the character) but decided it was not needed and the animation can be performed using stop-motion techniques. Textures and materials were added simultaneously as models were finished. I did this so that I could see how objects looked in a scene and ‘close’ the scene before animation. I used the term ‘closing’ a scene when all modelling and texturing for a scene is complete and it is left alone until animation. This is the stage where the colours and surface details are finalized. The more details on the modelling process please click here.

6) Laying out the Scene – The ‘closed’ scenes were ready to begin the first step of the animation stage, layout. By using the storyboards I could set up the composition of the shots, the positioning of characters, the fluidity of linking scenes and finalize lighting before animation. This is the stage where the visualization begins its transition into realization and the style and mood of the film is brought to life. Here, the camera angles (sometimes multiple cameras) are set up ready for animation.

7) Animation – This step can transform the project and breathe life into the 3D models, but it relies on all the previous and future steps. I chose to keep my animation in the style of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and animate in stop – motion. This involves key frame animation where characters and objects are animated across individual frames and requires no rigging. Although this is a very time consuming process it can produce unique and stylized results. The process is very technical as each limb of the characters is moved accordingly on every frame (25 frames a second) but is worth it in the end. The animation was one of the most time–consuming steps in the creative approach. For more details please click here.

8) Effects – Once the characters and scenes had been animated I applied effects and resolved any unexpected problems that animation may have caused. To minimize the risk of the 3D files becoming corrupted, each scene file was saved as a new file after every major change. One scene could eventually have up to 20 different files. The effects involved applying glows through ‘Videopost’ and adjusting the colour balance and the brightness and contrast of a scene. It is also concerned with applying motion blur and overall blur to a scene. The effects step is a key factor to creating a smooth scene. For example the scene with Jed’s tower uses all of the effects stated above and snowflakes falling from the sky, created using volume fog applied to a rotating sphere gizmo. For more details on some of the effects used in the film please click here.

9) Composing Music – Once the bulk of the film was complete I began the long process of composing 7 different songs for the film. The music had to compliment the mood of the film and was written in about three weeks. The process involved writing melodies on both guitar and occasionally piano, and transferring the notes into a sequencing software named FL studio 4. Once a track had been outputted to a wav file, it would be compiled and edited into the complete song using Sonar 1.0. For a more detailed look at composing the music for the film please click here.

10) Rendering – The rendering process involves setting up 3D Studio Max to calculate a sequence of complete frames that are edited together in the next step. This is by far the longest step sometimes taking up to 15 hours with two full scenes exceeding 18 hours. My movie contained over 125 separate scenes. Effects such as volume fog and reflections of objects can lengthen the process. For more details on rendering and time management, please click here.

11) Editing – This step completes the realization of the ideas, where the project comes together as a complete finished artefact. The editing was done using Adobe Premiere and took many hours. The process involves importing QuickTime movies and editing them into one continuous movie.

12) The Finishing Touches – This step is valid if problems occur with scenes in the movie or there are editing issues. I used this step after the work-in-progress exhibition where I received feedback and decided to change certain aspects of the movie prior to the hand in.

GANTT CHART ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Below is a chart that illustrates how my time was managed across the certain sections of the project.