DAYDREAM
Daydream is a 3D animated, stylized textured short film that tells the story of a woman, Mia , who has lost all color and passion in her life. When she rescues a colorful butterfly from the rain, it helps her remember that keeping her inner child alive can spark creativity and add color back into her life.
PROCESS
This film was created over the span of a year and half as a final thesis project during the animation Master's program at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Production started with concept drawings, sketches, and rough storyboarding ideas.
TEXTURES
The original 3D rig used in the film was created by 3D animator, Ramon Arango. The rig was purchased and then modified visually to fit the aesthetic of the film. In order to change the textures of the rig, the UVs had to be changed, exported and then textured in Substance Painter to give it a painterly style.
The decision was made to add more clutter, and objects to make the room feel busy, and lived-in. The intent was for Mia’s office to reflect her internal state. Her mind is stressed, lacking life, and taken over by work with no time for creative endeavors. The same texturing style that was used on Mia and the butterfly was used on the environment.
The prop models were found on CG Trader and implemented into the scene, then UV’d and textured. Everything was hand painted and the maps were plugged back into Maya to be rendered in Arnold.
ANIMATING
For my thesis, I looked towards animated works such as Up, Arcane: League of Legends, and Soul as inspiration for subtle and emotional character animation. These works are able to make audiences feel something with the slightest movements. It makes the character feel more alive with subtle and believable actions.
Through this style of animation, audiences are able to connect to the character and storyline.
Hands were a large part of the film. They can demonstrate a character’s thoughts and emotions on their own. Creating anticipation in the hands and fingers adds much more feeling, and makes the animation feel less mechanical overall. Taking hand reference videos myself was extremely helpful during my animation process. It helped me break down the hands into simple movements and poses since hands, overall can be quite complex.
Once the blocking pass was done, I moved into breakdowns and in-betweens. This is when poses are added in between the key poses to create smoother movement and timing between poses. When selecting the controls of the rig, the keyframes can be viewed on the timeline for that specific controller. They can also be viewed in the Graph Editor which displays them as points. These points can be edited further in the graph editor by smoothing out movements between frames.
The final steps in the animation process involved polishing. When a shot looks almost finished, then the final details are added in. This can take the longest to perfect, and the process can be different for each animator. For me, polishing involved animating the fingers, eye darts, and double checking the graph editor to make sure the keys were smoothed out and everything flowed cohesively.