December 11 Second Club Part 01

With university finishing for Christmas tomorrow I have decided to work on the 11 second club competition over Christmas... OK we did get set this as a module but I would have done it anyway.

Here is a link to this months competition.

This clip has no dialogue and is just sound effects. At first listen it sounds like somebody running on wooden floor boards the trying to smash something wooden before taking a few more steps then smashing something else.

I think this is a really interesting piece of sound and I like the fact it could be absolutely anything rather than two people talking like so many of the other clips.

I always knew that I wanted to do this animation in 3D so my first job was to find a suitable rig. I did this before I had decided on a story or look so that I could work out what I could and couldn't do depending on the limits of my chosen rig. I used animation buffet to find a rig as they have a good selection of not just human rigs but creatures, robots and props.

I see this project as a chance to update my showreel and not only work on my animation but also show off what I have learned already. Until now my 3D animation has involved human characters and I wanted to take this opportunity to use a creature or maybe a robot although after going over the sound clips a few (a lot of) times I decided that the audio sounded very much like a human character with 2 legs rather than an animal. I searched for a robot that would be suitable and downloaded a couple of possibilities and played around with them in Maya but I couldn't find one that felt right.

I always like to try and inject a bit of comedy into the animation that I do and I felt like this clip need that so I went with this little guy. He is still a human character but he is much more cartoony than the rigs I have used before.

 

I chose this rig for 3 reasons. 1, I like how simple it is and the way it's designed makes it easy to do fun cartoony poses which I like. 2, it looks like it's made of wood and as the audio clip is crashing wood I thought I would be able to something interesting to him to make it look like he was what was making all the noise rather than props. And 3, his head pops off and that's funny.

Once I had my rig I needed to come up with a story. I had a few little ideas before I decided on one but the one I went for is:

The shot is made up of 2 rooms one on top of another. There is a character in the top room and a character in the bottom room. The guy in the top room is trying to break out and he does this by running full pelt at the wall to break it down but instead just smashes against it and falls down in a heap on the floor.

This annoys the character in the bottom room and he taps on the ceiling with a broom to ask upstairs to keep the noise down but the ceiling collapses and the guy from the top room falls through and lands on him. They both end up in a heap on the bottom floor.

.