#sseely

Introducing my Junior Semester project work in progress, Norah’s Ataraxia!

Logline/Preview: Norah is unable to fit into the current societal norms of beauty and becomes frustrated, but finds peace and confidence within her artistic craft.

Summary:  Once upon a time, there was a bat named Norah who loved fashion. Every day she would take time to put together the right outfit, from her big batty ears to her toes. But one day, there was a new fashion trend on the rise. Long, narrow sleeves. The long narrow sleeves didn’t work for Norah. She had wings! Because of the new trend, Norah was scared to go outside. She didn’t want to be judged or ridiculed, because she couldn’t wear the newest fashion. She went to her favorite store, but all they had now was narrow sleeves! She watched in horror as all the little paws and legs slipped through the tiny tubes of cloth without a problem. She ran home in despair, angrily ripping through her mounds of clothes until she reached the bottom, pausing in shock. She found her mother’s old sewing machine. She had created so many outfits out of existing fashion, but what if she made her own? She ran to the fabric store, grabbing rolls of fabric, and then ran home, spending all into the night crafting her new clothes. She fell in love with her creation, her own pair of overalls. Ever since then, she wore her clothes with confidence, hand-sewing each of her garments, and showing her craft with pride.

This relates to the struggle of body positivity in a society that increasingly shames even those of average weight.

Currently I am in the process of modeling Norah, the main character, and two side characters. Next I will be modeling the environments, such as the street, her apartment, and a clothing store.

As for my rigging research project, I have been experimenting with different methods of rigging characters, and I have done three trials of methods, along with smaller offshoots while progressing in each.

The first trial of rigging came with Norah, with a simple bone style rigging in Cinema4D, that did get fairly far.

However, the rig would never function in the method needed, and despite hours of tutorials to fix the rig, it never proceeded. A few re-rigs were done, but all ended with the same results, despite using different controller bones, etc.

Due to the failures of Norah’s rigging, I attempted to rig on a new model, to see if it was simply the difficulties of the wings on the model and attempted in a new program, Blender. This model did not go far, as the controller bones continuously parented to the wrong bones, and led to a massive mess. 

Thus began the attempt of using Rigify, an add-on in Blender, to assist in the rigging.

This resulted in many errors, but after re-rigging the model again utilizing Rigify, as well as some kind assistance from a classmate, I resulted in a workable model.

This journey of 3D rigging has been a long and tedious one, and not one I expected to take so much time. But it has certainly been a learning experience, and I have watched many hours of rigging tutorials to get here. Listed below is a list of most of the tutorials watched in order to get to this point!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUeY1HMXvFM (previous main one)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBADEehcDWs (Summary of rigging)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3XtAFUWNuk (sculpting in blender)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBYb1YmaOMY (Rigging in blender)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZg97cmTcIs (Animal rigging)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPrnSACiTJ4 (Blender intro tutorial)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlNF4X2Koqw (Atmospheric Scene tutorial)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eshOzshjt90 (Grass Field)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZSD7pVIUkY (Blender object rendering)

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/physics/particles/particle_system_panel.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Huuo7RKO1RE (Animating in blender basics)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ14vidzSs4 (Blender walk cycle (Very good))

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coFiisOyW0Y (Dog walk cycle)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G-ZDo1UXhU (Cat walk cycle, amazing)

https://cgcookie.com/lesson/keying-sets-and-auto-keying (Keyframing)

For my junior film project, my ideas and thoughts have pivoted. Due to the current events of the world around us (COVID-19) and the current quarantine we are all under, I’ve felt lost. And rather than fighting that feeling entirely, I am leaning into it, and creating my new project, The Wandering Wood.

The Wandering Wood centers around my character, Jay, who goes for a walk to get some water when a mysterious forest appears before him. Curious, he ventures into the forest and gets lost until a friend comes to the rescue.

Part of my reasoning behind this film is the sense of being lost that the current situation in the world has made me feel. I feel like I’ve been lost in the midst of all of the chaos of the world, and bringing myself back to a familiar character of mine is comforting. Jay, a character I’ve had since I was 10, is a comforting figure and face for me and has been with me through many troubles, helping me work through them and find myself again. In this way, having Jay being the character who is lost, is displaying who he is to me.

For the project currently, I have modeled and rigged the main character Jay, as well as the two environments he will be in, the peaceful prairie and the wandering woods. 

The peaceful prairie will be a more realistic style, while the wandering woods will be in a low polygonal style, to show the differences between the two spaces more intensely.

This is the current model of Jay being utilized, sculpted entirely in sculptris.

At the moment, I am in the animating stage of the project, however, I did just re-model the forest from its previous realistic look. Parts of the storyboard are also in the process of being revised, as per critique from midterm presentations.

How to Train Your Dragon was the primary movie that encouraged me to pursue animation as a lifelong career and joy.

I understood why I loved it, the action, adventure, and fantasy creatures being combined in a beautiful medium.

But why did I love the second movie even more than the beloved first? That was what I set out to discover.

I was tasked with drawing the first (or as close to) frame of each of the first 30 shots of How to Train Your Dragon 2, and then listing the shot type and camera movement. 

When doing this exercise, I realized first that the shadows of the dragons lead us through Berk, establishing the environment, along with the norm of said environment. We are then taken aboard the dragons with dialogue, which is where the tracking shots begin, starting the race that begins the film.

Reading the first two chapters of Lisa Cron’s book Wired For Story felt like a direct attack against my way of storytelling. Or at least, my old way of writing stories. I would spew absolutely inconsequential information across the page with smears of a plot and expect that to be a convincing story. The text would flow on and on, with no plot hooks or inciting events. It would begin with a time of peace, then suddenly, conflict. Then the conflict would be over, and resolution. No time to process, and no gradual buildup or slide down. Just a plateau steeper than Devil’s tower, not to mention the lack of focus. It was quite evident I grew up in the phase of “LOL XDDD SO RaNdOm” with how the story could go from an intense fight to a character eating some pizza rolls, then back to the fray. This was intensified with the influence of anime, where I came to believe that some characters could exist with no motivation or goals, just to take up space and be a wall for the protagonist to talk to. Several of my personal characters have suffered from such, and despite having been a ‘main’ character for 10+ years, they never saw much development until recently.