We’re really happy to feature the making of new Ran Sieradzki‘s animation. Don’t miss his previously post, the exclusive Making of Meet Me Far.
So, how did I go about creating ‘Escape…’ animation? I got notification that Animation Mentor, highend online school, has released a free rig for grabs. I downloaded the new, free Stewart rig and opened the file in Maya.
Once I saw the appealing design, model and awesome rig I decided I had to try it in an animation. I set a time limit, did not want to dwell on a shot for too long. My limit was six days (I knew I would not have time to sit and animate full days like in a studio). My thought was to animate more of an action shot, something that happened before Stewart came into the frame, Stewart is in frame, does his action and gets out of frame. Out, in and out again. I then came across an idea of a warehouse, so, I was looking for reference for a location.
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/80521350[/vimeo]
I then modeled a rough location in Maya so that I could set a camera in and decide what I am shooting, again, roughly, since I knew things will change as I was progressing with the shot.
Once I had a placement of an environment setup, I started planning the animation for the shot since I do not rush to animate in Maya, first thing I knew I wanted to show Stewart being flown into the scene from screen right, smash on the floor, unconscious, wake up, hear something from where he had flown in, get up and jump over a crate out the window.
So, I had an idea of an action for Stewart. First thing, I had to plan the fall. For that, I used Digicel|Flipbook, this is what I use for fast planning of animation, I need to see things move. Thumbnailing is good method but I find it not enough for me. I need to see movement, I am not committed to anything, it is still very rough.
Again, I knew things will change once I am in Maya I was satisfied with the motion sketch and moved on to the next step which was using my iPhone and FilMiC Pro app (if Im not mistaken it’s about $4.99 on the app store) to shoot myself waking up from being unconscious for a video reference…
Now I was ready to place Stewart in the scene and start blocking his action! 🙂 yay… I start a fresh scene and I reference in the warehouse layout I had modeled and I also reference in Stewart.
I always have a fresh animation scene with my objects, characters referenced in, that way, if I need to change the rig, add things to it, I just give the new rig file the same name my reference file is looking for and everything is kept nicely and updates in my animated shots scenes throughout. Same for the background models. While I have few boxes laid out, I can model high version of what I want the crate to look like, save the new file like the initial reference file was named and my scene is being updated automatically without importing and creating a messy file
I also add in an Image plane and I project the rough motion sketch from Digicel|Flipbook to it so I
have an idea of rough timing and some sort of posing.
Then… I block the posing for Stewart… Keeping in mind things will change as I continue. Same with the video reference only the video is a separate Quicktime file that is playing on top of Maya and not an Image plane, I have in mind that I am not committed to the ref, I always have the freedom to change things as I see fit and serves the animation, for example, I am… Ahem… a bit heavier than Stewart here so my speed of getting up would be slower… (I know…), I also know that in a normal situation Stewart would do a sporty maneuver and just jump up to a standing position, but, he just got hit in the head, lost his consciousness so he would probably take a bit
longer to get up. Thank god. Once I was done with the blocking stages.
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/80748172[/vimeo]
I selected the curves and Splined them. Had to fix a lot of things, tweaked timing etc… I also use a free script called AutoTangent that basically fixes overshoot issues that I prefer being in control of.
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/80748174[/vimeo]
Ok… I am done for now, it is time to model a high res version of the crates and light the scene. For the lighting, I used one Spotlight that was my key and basically the sun. It was facing down and into the window. I kept it white because I had in mind the look I wanted for this shot. The Intensity of the light was set to 2.00 and I turned Raytrace shadows on.
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/80748175[/vimeo]
I also had lights that affected Stewart only to give him bounce light from the environment. So, the scene had one key/sun spotlight and five more lights facing Stewart from every angle to give that extra effect on him.
With passes and keep it minimal. Passes list I used:
01.Background
02. Stewart color
03. Ambient occlusion
04. Motion blur
05. Zdepth
I then… waited… and waited… after about 30 hours… I had my render passes ready and I started comping it all using Nuke, color corrected and rendered 🙂 That is basically how I did this shot…
Hope this is helpful and giving ideas to you, if you have anything to say, add, correct or sharpen my knowledge, please feel free! I would love to hear from you!
