Generally speaking voiceovers and sound effects need to find a professional team for the soundtrack and dubbing, due to the short length of this small short film, I will personally dub the effect sound myself and cancel the soundtrack, because 30 seconds of soundtrack is very difficult to match and hard to find, simply don’t use it for good effect, so I will match myself with about twenty sound effects, and some free licensed sound sources on the internet.

Then the video compositing was adjusted, the sound effects were paired, a little video filter was added as well as a little fill light darkening and finally it was time to output the rendering session. The final renders will be released separately in the next section!

Once the camera positions, lighting layouts and character movements are all in order, it’s time to start rendering. Thanks to the school’s rendering farm, the rendering is vastly more efficient in terms of fault tolerance and speed.

Here are the number of shots I rendered on the school’s render farm again.

During this time there were many jump shots rendered on the farm, in the end it was only possible to ensure that the wrong shots were not rendered, and only one task could be created to render one shot at a time, not multiple tasks at the same time, to ensure that the shots were rendered correctly, also scenes with incorrect mapping were found, then the incorrectly rendered areas had to be re-rendered from a new load of the correct mapping, also the lighting was overexposed in places and also needed to be re There are also areas of overexposure in the lighting that need to be re-tuned. Even though we are at the end of the workload, the quality of the renders needs to be carefully reviewed to prevent minor errors.

Finally comes the post, dubbing and compositing

Using the reference, I firstly align all the characters with the camera, complete the layout, then adjust the character’s movements, which is often referred to as rigging, and then start the familiar blocking process, which breaks down the movements into keyframes and removes the automatic coherence of the movements, so that when I return to polish the movements will be more natural.

Once you have finished blocking, go back to polish and refine the character performance, adjusting the curves to be as dynamic as possible.

As a lot of displacement is needed to adjust the movement, the position of the lights has to be adjusted a little more, and then it’s time for an exciting and long render.

The next most important part of the animation is rigging. In the first two terms, we have learnt and utilised how rigging works in 3D animation, firstly by blocking the key frames of the animation to adjust the key animation nodes of the character, and then by polishing the node curves of the animation to make the character dynamic more natural and in line with the laws of movement.

Based on the subplot I made, I found that there was still quite a lot to study about the action as well as the reference. I decided to start in two ways, either by interpreting it myself and filming it as a reference for the action based on the subplot, or by finding relevant videos and studying the action path.

The animation of the chameleon can only be understood and imitated through the video, focusing on the eye movements and the retraction of the tongue of the chameleon.

After completing the scene construction, we have to consider the lighting of the characters and scenes to set up, why first set up the scene and then play the light instead of playing the light and then set up the scene? The reason is that the mapping of the scene will affect the reflections, making the characters’ colours slightly different, and the light from the scene will be blocked, so you also need to fill in the light for the blocking, so that the picture does not look particularly grey.

Using arnold’s sky light properties, this powerful technique can then construct beautiful outdoor light, and adjusting the parameters and light temperature to simulate the feel of the sun overhead in the west.

After the sky is set up with light parameters, the following need to fill the shadow part of the character with light, the light of the building due to the outdoor light is sufficient, the effect of the sky light system simulation in arnold rendering out good results, unlike in the evening or evening need to consider a variety of indoor light and a variety of complex light outside, so do not need to supplement too many light sources. Depending on the position of the character, I have deployed a number of light points above the character, and here is where they are deployed.

At the same time there is also the position of the moving follow light, ground reflection light, in addition to these light processing in the final composite can be in the AE or other post-production software for filter and light processing, so that the picture more soft light effects more delicate, of course, this is the task of the post, now the next step will be to mobilize the character made, blocking and polish processing.

After the storyboard was made, the scene had to be built according to the set screen. Firstly, I searched the internet for a model of the West, and in order to save more time chose the building body that was ideally close to the storyboard, then I needed a chair as a prop, again without making any binding props found and imported through the model I had downloaded before, the most important thing was that the shape and the scene fitted perfectly, then the main screen was set.

Then it’s time to slowly build up a street of the western town, as the later shots will show a little bit of the town in general, so there’s a whole town to build up further.

There will be more houses on both sides of the streets of the town, and although the workload of modelling houses is not large, the number of houses in the whole production of a town size is still particularly large, so efficiency is needed to reduce unnecessary work, because the task of the scene is also still a task that acts as a backdrop, there will be details of course good, but not particularly important, so in the model package of the main shot scene, I again I found some suitable house models. And tried to place these models on both sides of the street.

In order to create a scene with an open view, it was not enough to find the houses, but some more were needed to fill in the empty space, so it was necessary to build them one by one, but the workload was not as great as expected and a lot of time was saved by using the models already made.

Finally, the scale of the character models and the other house models were adjusted to be as realistic as possible, and the placement of the houses on either side was optimised. Then it was time to give the textures and mapping, as different downloadable models have different styles of mapping and textures, and as there are also models that you have built yourself, you also need to harmonise the mapping. Once this is done, you can probably complete the layout of the scene.

The next step is to start building the the lights.

This week, once I had decided on a theme, I was able to create a framework for the rest of my work. Although it was ostensibly a restriction on my work, in fact, it was easier to create a clear and coherent plot when we had a fixed theme to work with than when we had no idea what to do.

Of course the first step is still to go for references rather than creating blindly. Of course, unless our imagination has built a perfect story as well as a world in our mind, we still need references before building the story, otherwise the story will lack credibility. The credibility of a good short film story is very important, otherwise the sky is the limit and it will be felt as a headache, making people feel very off-beat.

The above are a few more steps I have taken on the internet to find western animated shorts. In addition to the common phenomenon of the western cowboy as the main protagonist, another point is that the protagonist generally has a cooler personality trait, or even stronger tension, even using a cowboy’s pistol, so as to highlight the western theme. Of course, the subject we are creating is a funny animated short, so I think we can make the protagonist serious and funny at the same time, creating a big contrast to enrich the character and make the story interesting. I had an idea that I could do something like the Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes animations that we used to watch, where the conflict between the two characters creates a contrast that makes the story funny and interesting. After thinking about it I decided to use a chameleon in a small western town. Chameleons generally live in the tropical woods and are less often found in the mountains, this rare attribute would also make the story interesting and importantly the chameleon character model is very good looking.

I decided on the character and the theme, and then I started to set up the plot. My plot is that in a small town in the west, a cowboy is taking a break. Unexpectedly, a chameleon is disturbed. The cowboy is curious about this thing at first, but thinks about it again. To prevent him from resting, he planned to throw it away. As a result, the chameleon quickly ran back to take up his chair. The cowboy couldn’t catch it behind the cowboy. He finally killed it with his proud pistol. Lie down and rested happily. The final ending is that he thought it was dead, but he jumped out of his hat when he was still okay, scared the male lead, and then it was over. The following is a storyboard based on this story. Draw, and further improve the plot.

It may seem that the picture is particularly abstract now, but at least I have a picture and an impression in my head, after all, it is not ultimately presented as a two-dimensional digital animation, so there is no need to make special deductions on the storyboard, the two most important points are the approximate stand and the camera picture on the line, but of course the storyboard is only a reference, not all will be copied without change, there will still be an increase in the deletion of the picture, the following will begin to build the model and prepare for the animation The following will be the start of the model building and preparation for the animation stage.

By the end of the third semester, each of us had created our final project openers, and for my final project I wanted to make a short animation film. Although I had a rough idea of what I wanted to produce, there was a wide range of things that could be produced for a short animation, so I will explain how I chose my topic below.

The length of my FMP will not be too long, around half a minute to a minute, so I need to learn from and refer to what most of the one-minute animations on the internet are about these days, as a one-minute animation is too short to tell too much of a story, and it is important to learn from the experience of those who have gone before me.

I found animations on youtube and on that fit the description.

Along with the reference video from last semester’s FMP, I came up with the theme for this short animation

1. there will be no complicated story or twist.
2. the tone of the theme is comedy, the characters’ action effects and the script will be more effective.
3. The scenes and characters should not be too many or too complex, otherwise it would be easy to bring too much information in a short minute that would be difficult to understand.
4. The pacing needs to be clear and uniformly fast in order for the viewing senses to be able to enjoy it.

With these goals in mind, I decided to create an animated short film about humour and conflict. After talking to Alan at school, we agreed on the subject matter and felt that we could work on the props for the conflict so that the story would be more watchable and believable. At first I had a lot of ideas for scripts and stories, but I found that it took too much time and effort to create a 3D animated short film in a short space of time, even with the least complicated and easy to produce scripts, but also to create scenes, props and characters, as it was difficult to put together my own plot in the evening with both free and paid models, and the models built by different modellers would produce the effect of a uniform painting style.

So I decided to change my mind, since I had limited time to make a relatively graphic and dramatic animated short, I gave up modelling my own bound characters and modelled the scenes myself, using the model library online and in our 3D animation course to match and select the questions. Yes, but it is also like a kind of exam, which is equivalent to putting a limited number of assets in front of you, and using your own understanding to match and solve the questions and come up with answers.

So for my project, I chose a linear narrative of a funny western animation. The second reason is that it is easier to buy and download western scenes online, as there are more resources. The cost of building the scenes is relatively low, but you just need to think more about how to rationalise the funny points. In the next chapter I will continue to look for references to the western theme and start designing the plot and storyboard.