Genre Twist Rationale

Many thanks to everyone who helped! Rationale is written below :3

As I adore the cute 3D characters for children’s shows, I wanted to create an adorable character. After deciding that my aesthetics would be that of a family film, a choice had to be made regarding the contradictory genre. Horror seemed like it had the largest gap from a family film, meaning I would have to make my animation change from a cuter style to something scary. From the variety of iconic film scenes shown in class, Breakfast at Tiffany's was the most inspirational towards my animation. My classmates liked a suggested scene of mine of a seemingly innocent girl showing her “true” colours as a horrifying girl.

My research was focused around discovering a style and finding possible ways to creating a dramatic transformation in my character's personality. I found the circular shape language was present in the majority of children's shows; playing a significant role in emphasizing youthful and loveable characters. I also discovered from different sources; webtoons and Japanese anime, that facial expressions play an important role in showing a character's turn in personality. From my research, I knew I had to create a character with many circular features and have drastic changes within the expression especially with the eyes for the largest impact possible. When I had a grasp of what kind of story I wanted, I gave my character the name Shoo (sounds cute but also “go away”) as she was going to be portrayed as isolated from other children. Summary descriptions including her prop's origins and backstory built a solid foundation towards Shoo's developing stages.

The designing process was my favourite part of the assignment due to all the drawing I was able to do. During the ideation process, my designs were largely influenced by the show Pocoyo since they revolved around a young character. I received feedback from peers regarding designs and their opinions about the style they liked. From this, I began developing Shoo, focusing on giving her curved shapes. Another key influence was a cartoon character named Erma who would always have her fringe covering her face. I thought this was an excellent suggestion from a classmate because it made my character seem shy and mysterious. After I had a clear idea of Shoo and the skull's (Molly) aesthetics, I made a few notes on how I wanted to decorate her room to look of that belonging to a young girl with soft pinks and purples.

Along with final decisions such as material and colours for Shoo, along came the storyboarding. It never specified to create multiple storyboard ideas but I thought doing so would allow multiple perspectives with camera angles and interior design. While doing so, I never forgot to ask around peers for feedback and ideas on how I could improve my storyboards, leading to the final storyboard idea. However, I noticed that many changes happened when I actually began animating Shoo due to reasons such as time and critique sessions. As much as peer feedback was important, personal ideas were also a reason towards the developing storyboard.

Using Maya for the first time began as an interesting experience. A reason to why Shoo was such a simple character was impacted because of this: I had never used a 3D animating software. Because Molly consisted of a circle with more circles and sharper shapes attached to it, I thought it was a nice place to start my modelling experience. Keeping note of topology was difficult initially because I was always thrown off with the vast number of edges and vertexes but it improved over time. I learned of attaching different polygons together through Shoo’s model when I had to stitch the vertexes of her limbs to her main body. Texturing and rigging was kept simple on Molly when time became a factor to cater to. Shoo’s UV texturing and rigging was done while watching in class demos to further understand what I had to do. When all the basics to the models were complete, the animating began. 

When animating, I had altered storyboards to better fit my intentions. Examples include cutting out an entire shot and adding it to another which cost less time as I had found ways to cut corners such as covering legs with a table for a run cycle so it was faster to animate. The final shot had been rendered twice to show her expression texture change and with lights and environment addition, my animation was finally complete.