‘Cycle of Time: An animation of all that is’
My next project will be an animation that goes over a broad range of subjects that all relate to the main theme of time. Though this sounds pretty broad, it will focus on the cycles of different lifespans. Be that physical process of elements or the mind frames that humans go through. The reason I have chosen an animation for this concept is because of my fascination of visually seeing how things work or degrade over time and being able to show that myself will really be helpful within the animation learning process.
I have already begun to delve into what kind of subjects I could include within my animation briefly or for a period of time. These ideas or topics used could be as follows:
1. Natural life cycle (discusses how nature is a vicious cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. This can go on to include animals or humans themselves.)
2. How time itself is a state of mind given meaning ( Views of space describing how insignificant things are in the grand scheme Shots of suns and planets)
3. Time and its state of mind (How Humans see time through the different stages of their life.) These rough guidelines for my animation are subject to change and may go less/more in-depth depending on time constraints and what modelling needs to be done.
The programs I will use to create all of these parts shall be in Photoshop for the texturing, 3ds max for the modelling and part animation composition and after effects to add additional elements or to add certain effects to the animation parts.
The whole of the animation will be scripted by me and narrated further down the line. Preferably I would like to have an older gentleman playing the narrator though off course I will try out the lines with a female perspective so I can see what works better for my animation. References for my animation can be found through these links:
‘The piano’- This video highlights the whole life cycle of a soldier that shows his losses in life and the true loves of his life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZJDNSp1QJA
‘One Life’ – Another video that shows a life cycle of a man as you see his story:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzwBHP3nnNM
Both of these references are all composed of music throughout that reflects the sad mood of the animations. Mine will differ as a spoken narrative will conduct the story through its stages bringing a much more personal approach to the journey the viewer will see.
Bringing the cycle to life:
For this project I will need a range of models and different elements to help bring the animation to life.
Clever use of adobe After Effects will also be necessary to this as a lot of visual elements can be made through this.
However before I start to create 3d models I need to first sort out the story and script for my animation.
From this initial basis I can then think of all the visual parts that are to work alongside the narrative to further develop the final product.
The story should follow this initial cycle:
1. Introduction to topic
2. Visual elements to introduce
3. Beginning paragraphs with hints of what is to come in the animation 4. Glimpses of different life cycles starting out
5. Continues story
6. Goes back to initial things we saw at the beginning to show the cycle has come to an end I want my animation to be more than just a simple story that is forgotten so easily I want it to be an animation worth remembering for pulling in audiences and making them emotionally invested within my product. This can only be done if the concept is good to begin with and is slowly polished through the coming weeks.
Art Style:
I am still undecided on the art style for my animation, this is due to conflicting ideas I am having as to the direction I want it to have. What I might end up doing is having an animation that comprises of a lot of different art styles so some may be in all silhouette form while others may be normal 3d while others again may look for contempory art styled. This is so I can add a multitude of different visual styles to give the animation more of an artistic flare. Below are some examples of different types of styles I may
incorporate.
These two pictures are strong influences into how I want my arts style to perhaps go as I love the 2d silhouette visuals but perhaps animated in 3d. Also the second picture is a deconstructed face but the
overall shape helps our brain to connect the dots for the eyes and face. This would also be a nice effect if I can create something that visually looks abstract yet we as an audience can see the form that lies underneath.
My idea is very much still in early development so these ideas are all subject to change as the animation progresses
Script work
Since the animation is going to have a spoken narrative over it a script must be present before I begun to construct the animation so I have a basic direction to follow to help create a story. Originally the idea was to have a multitude of stories going on yet I feel this idea has changed as my script has begun to take shape.
Instead of animations that are all different and make the viewer feel disjointed with the story they are watching, I will have the narrative almost as a spoken poem with accompanying music. The animation helping to piece the words together. For example
As the story begins the narrative mentions time, so the onscreen element to help with this will be a clock that you can see ticking along. Another example would be the script mentions time is running out so the visual element would be a candle would be burning out.
Though the script itself is not long when slowed and spoken to go along with the animation it will feel a lot longer. Animation helps with pauses as when no words are spoken the animation helps fill the void.
This means overall we are looking at a piece that could last a couple of minutes and have a lot of elements to be made to go along with it.
Script final Version
Time.
What is time?
A numerical figure told to help make us feel we have someplace to be in the universe.
A never ending cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
Generations after generations of stories that are untold. Yet are unfolding as you listen to these words.
Life itself is a story we all write ourselves. To be, or not to be. Even though we don’t know the question.
Do you go or do you stay?
Do you chase the love of your life?
Or do you choose to let time decide?
The roulette table of life does not stop for you to catch a breather. Hands of fate are constantly rolling the dice that alters the course of time.
Perhaps there will be no tomorrow or yesterday. Maybe excuses like ‘I’ll be there in five’ will never be heard. Not because we are cruel. But because the fuse of time burnt out past its expiration date.
While life oozes and crawls its way past you don’t stop to think this, or that, or why? Or how? Just do.
Time doesn’t care its your birthday tomorrow or the wedding is soon to be.
The path is starting to end, the light beginning to dim, the curtains are closing and soon…
We pause…
We finished…
Time stopped..
Looking back do you regret what you did? The chances missed?
Well good.
Because time has only just begun for you. So don’t wait for someone to decide for you Your time starts now…
The final version took around 1 week and a half to complete, All in all this was a much quicker delivery date than I had expected so I appear to be ahead of schedule for the design process.
Animation progress logs:
Scene 1 synopsis: a closing in shot of a clock ticking along to visually suggest the theme of time followed by what appears to be a door into the story that is my animation
The camera currently pans towards the clock and then swings around to reveal the door hidden behind it.
After analyzing the scene as it stands I have been advised to perhaps change the transition to the door with perhaps a new effect or even to carefully place the door so it appears as a new element seamlessly within the scene.
(Updated version)
The clock now has the door within its clock hands as a tiny model this allows me to zoom the camera towards the clock and not have any movement at all as the zoom handles the whole scene. This is a much better transition I feel and less jittery for the audience to watch.
Scene 2 Synopsis: a panning shot of different baby toys ending with a hand covered in blood to illustrate a short life cycle narration
This scene was relatively easy to make, the models only being very simple as I plan to create a rendering material that make the objects seem a lot more intricately detailed. The main criticism of the scene being the hand that did not transfer over well in a preview. With this in mind I plan to animate the hand to show that whoever it belongs to is dying and thus gives a reason for the hand to be there.
As you can see, splicing the hand to be a separate element did cause some issue to the mesh it was attached to but these are obviously hidden from view so cannot effect the final render. All in all, I was much happier with the scene now that the hand has a little more life to it, making the hand shudder from side to side looks almost as if the character is reaching for life before passing out so it mixes with the scenes narration quite nicely.
Scene 3 Synopsis: Book gravity simulation effect to show the stories of peoples life just passing by. Effect achieved by the Nvidia Physx rigid body.
This scene was comprised of over 100 models, The reason for choosing such numbers was so that when I simulate the books hitting the floor, I wanted the viewer to feel a sense of weight that these books have, and using just one of the books I don’t think would have been enough to effectively demonstrate this.
Originally this scene was going to comprise of book towers that slowly fall over but, treating the scene almost as if it was rain falling I felt helped achieve the sensation that all these lives and stories are merely that, as quick as the rain that falls by without a second glance.
My next problem was tackling the transition to the next scene which I originally just had a fade out effect, it was much more visually interesting to have the camera lose focus and warp the scene to a
nothingness instead of a basic fade to black. In the end this proved for a much better scene overall
Scene 4 Synopsis: a particle transition achieved in after effects to reveal text and to also demonstrate my technical ability in creating visual effects
This was one of the biggest challenges I had to face as I had never successfully created a particle effect within solely after effects itself. Overall it was a learning curve that helped strengthen my key basic skills within the programme, I had learnt that placing a solid background and setting my particle to the opposite colour would obviously brighten the particle and make it much more visible. I then could boost this even further by ramping up the number of particles being spawned bearing into the hundreds of thousands.
The effect that I was aiming to create was a spiral visible gust of wind that revealed some text from a murky background. Below is my visual effect and the different stages to get it to function correctly:
As you can see I have two particles that spawn simultaneously next to each other, one controls how the text is revealed and the other is the visual effect that you see. This was ultimately the best option to undertake because it allows for the text reveal to feel a lot more randomized as the effect crosses it.
Using a spiral force on the effect allows the rebel particles to fly off into various directions allowing for a much more natural motion.
Setting the background particle as a light source and carefully timing the movement allows the effect to combine together into one seamless movement.
The fade off effect was set to the particle life span period so both die out together and cover the text to how it originally was. At first I wanted all of the text to be covered completely black again but after going back to my theme I felt it looked a lot more visually impacting to leave one word still visible which is the ‘stay’ word at the end. This of course was not detrimental to the effect as a whole and was more a creative choice than anything else.
Scene 5 Synopsis: A visual effect of a heart that splits into particles and dances around the scene:
This was one of the hardest scenes of my whole animation to implement as I had to try to learn how to script in the 3ds max particle editor which was a completely new tool for me to learn. Overall I had a lot of iterations to keep changing as I was also unsure on how to alter the path of my effects.
After a lot of research the ‘find target’ node was the best option for defining a path for particles to take, with this in mind I began writing into the system to force the particle to take a path that varied the height and direction to make it feel like it was dancing around the scene.
Afterwards forcing more particles to spawn at new intersections allowed me to control the speed of the movement much more effectively as the old spawn would fade and die of while the new spawn would take control. Since all of the effect had the same material this crossover was seamless allowing for natural transitions with no visible evidence to suggest of a change.
Mapping the heart shape at the beginning was also a challenge as the script had to be written so the particle understood to map to the vectors of the shape, below is the script written for the particle effect:
on ChannelsUsed pCont do (
pCont.usePosition = true pCont.useVector = true )
on Init pCont do (
)
on Proceed pCont do (if currenttime == 0 then (
count = pCont.NumParticles() for i = 1 to count do (
pCont.particleIndex = i
pcont.particlevector = pcont.particlePosition )
) )
on Release pCont do (
)
As you can see this helpful code allowed me to map the particles to the shape of my 3d model allowing for the heart to be visible and split very quickly.
The major change to this scene was instead of the heart transitioning to another heart, it instead forced the particles to implode and spread out through the scene.
This iteration was introduced because the changes of the 2 models were just too subtle for the viewer to notice and most did not notice it unless asked about the effect. This was a simple process to manage as I instead deleted the end model and changed the particle node system to implode instead of finding the
model target.
Scene 6 Synopsis: A man sits at a table pondering on the fate of the dice in his hand, scene includes animation of the guy.
This scene was to demonstrate more of the story and add a more human touch to the film as a whole, adding a human rig to the animation allowed me to demonstrate simple movement of the guy and allow me to progress the narration further.
The scene comprises of only a few simple models, a teacup, a set of cards, a table, a cup, some pills and the basic 3ds max rig itself. I also used a cloth animation mesh to set a ‘table cloth’ although this was in reflection a bad decision as it slowed render times down vastly and is almost lost in the finished scene.
Overall the scene was made much more compelling by a close up shot of the hand opening onto the dice, this was after deciding that the dice were the most important element of the scene so should be made a key focus within it. The finished scene looks great now with the addition of the close up cam.
Scene 7 Synopsis: shot of dice falling to the ground through space and time. This is simulated through a particle whirlwind that circles and envelopes the dice.
The main director in this scene is the warp vortex force situated underneath the scene; this force is responsible for all the spiral particles that follow the dice on their journey downwards.
As the first spiral wave finishes I cut it off from the warp influence causing it to explode outwards and transform into a ring as you can see in the image above.
The main problem I faced with this scene was the camera angles as the original was situated far too close to the dice and you could not grasp a concept of them falling. This was then altered to be many camera angles and the effect was tweaked so you could visibly see the dice moving and ended up being a much more fitting scene.
Scene 8 Synopsis: graveyard scene to show a mourning father at the grave of his son scene comprises of more rig animation and a after effects rain visual.
The scene although using only very simple elements ended up looking very effective and is one of the strongest scenes in my animation. The dirt for the grave is a plane that has a noise modifier on tweaked to simulate a dirt buildup and with the render on top of that it comes out very nicely.
The grave is a cube with a few bevels on the type with a text tool edged into the surface to spell out the writing on the grave. Seeing as the dirt looked good I decided to use this same effect but on a larger scale for the land the scene is situated on. This gave it a hilly look that you see in the image above.
For ending this scene I wanted the character to mimic what the narrator said, although this was carried out without fault, a lot of the detail of the lip movement is lost due to the render. This still was not a problem on the whole as you can still make out that the rig is indeed trying to lip sync.
Scene 9 Synopsis: A abstract decoration on a cake that pans out to show a whole stage and auditorium is also within the scene.
The final scene I wanted to look visually intricate, much more so than the previous scenes which have been emptily modelled but have had certain visual effect to brighten them up.
This scene was built around research into the visual layout of stages and auditoriums around the world.
Below is the scene build up in order of progress:
The final stage is above, in total this scene took me around 2 weeks of modelling and planning out ready for the final scene.
Final Touches:
After creating the final scene I then had to composite the footage into a separate time layer in after effects so I could reverse the footage and have that as my final scene. I felt having a scene in reverse was a good idea because overall the strong messages throughout my animation are always to do with how time keeps ticking so playing the animation backwards I felt was the most appropriate visual technique to further emphasizes my final point in the script.
For the render I applied a ink and paint material to all objects in my animation, this created a sketch look that felt perfect for the visual style I went for.
Overall I am very happy with the final outcome of my animation if I had to go back and change anything I would perhaps change the style of rendering a little more to better reflect the artistic style I was
originally going for.
In total I have spent 6 months working on this project from start of planning to the final render and will be a excellent piece for my portfolio.
