Category: Collaborative

Project name: Lost Paradise

Group member:

MA 3D Animation: Yaxin Hou (Cynthia)/Qiaoqing Yu (Jonathan)/Jiazhuo Tang (Tang)

MA 2D Animation: Yinyun Xu (Sophia)/Guowei Gou (Guowei)

Showreel: https://vimeo.com/808156376

https://vimeo.com/808156376

Process Video (my part) : https://youtu.be/-8ej9zVhbkI

Brief introduction of story: The animation Lost Paradise presents the boy Nimo’s experience of seeking friendship in his fantasy amusement park.

Category: A promotional video of game

Inspiration:

The story was inspired by school bullying as it has been a prevalent social problem. Stepping from childhood into adolscence,victims of bullying struggle to develop mechanisms for selfprotection and build defensive mentality to the outside world.
Thus, through this animation, we attempt to express a style ofunhealty defensive mentality which desire for building bondswith others but, at the same time, fear and disbelieve in suchrelationships. The presented mentality sometimes also even
makes the person destroy the relationships they have built.

About the game (a brief summary as the main focus of the animation
project is on the story concetps):

The player picks up the boy’s broken doll at the end of the animationand starts his/her quest in saving the boy. Through interactions with
the fantasy amusement park in different episodes, the play triggers stories and learns about the inner world of the boy.

Summary: 

Five members completed the collaborative task within ten weeks. The theme of the project is school bullying. Through this video, we aim to map out a kind of self-protection or response to trauma after being bullied in childhood, which is a way to emphasize the consequences of such bullying behavior in childhood.

Generally, the animation’s overall atmosphere and story content matched our expectations, effectively conveying the theme.

However, I am not satisfied in two aspects. More than the original goal of making a promotional video for the game was needed; a promotional video for a created game should also accompany a backstory supporting the video. In addition, the animation could have been improved as it took less than a week to complete. And our ability to express the lens language is insufficient, so the story’s rhythm needs to be better. We didn’t use some classical cinematic lens language and transitioned to make the animation more connected.

I am satisfied with the early story design and model design stages because we spent a lot of time brainstorming the story from different angles, effectively conveying divergent ideas, and resolving conflicts among the team. As for the part of the model design, it went smoothly. I understood the workflow, from two-dimensional design drawing to three-dimensional model building, texturing, rigging, animating, rendering, and compositing. This workflow gave me a clear idea of what needed to be done to build the connections between the different stages, such as script concerning, modeling, animating, rendering, and compositing, which also helped me estimate the volume and time of the following animating work. In the first week, due to our ambitions, we made the mistake of setting the task volume large, but at the time, we needed to realize that our time was tight. We kept reducing the size of the project every week, trying to control it to be completed within ten weeks. But once I have become thoroughly familiar with the workflow, One of the critical things I have learned from this process is about being realistic about what can be achieved quickly.

If I did this project again, I would know more clearly how to allocate my time to different parts. We would arrange a timeline more clearly and assign work more precisely. And in the early stage, I would watch some movies with similar styles, use their lens language as a reference, and conduct a shot preview in advance to ensure that the connection between the shots will be better in the future.

I want to thank Serra, George, and others for their suggestions for our collaborative project and also very grateful to Ian for his valuable comments on my blog. Their advice and guidance were beneficial to us during the mid-stage project when we had a lag in the story design part. I am also very grateful to all my teammates for providing technical help during the production process, which helped me learn much in this collaboration. Debating in collaboration is common. Arguments about creative ideas in the collaborative process can be problematic; however, they are an essential part of this process to produce diverse content stories. The collision of ideas creates a more exciting team project.

Portfolio

Personal process:

This week, I mainly focused on the part of animating shots.

I am responsible for six shots (7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12), all including in the scene of the toy room :

Shot 7: The boy walks into the room. Camera close-up to the footsteps, following the boy into the room. (shot length: 3 – 5 seconds)

Shot 8: (NEW) Instead of shooting the scenes of people, the layout of the toy room is shot with the camera from left to right and then from right to left, which is to shoot with a similar human perspective. (shot length: 5 seconds)

Shot 9: With the camera still, take a close-up shot of the doll lying in the toy machine. (shot length: 3 seconds)

Shot 10: The boy tilted his head and looked closer at the doll. Camera angle: Level up, close-up. Shot the boy from the side and above the shoulder. (shot length: 4 seconds)

Shot 11: Leaning over the machine, the boy looked at the doll slightly frustratedly and asked, ‘ Can you be my friend?’ The camera shot about the shoulder ( shot length: 6 seconds)

Shot 12: The doll nodded and pressed her hand against the glass. The boy looked at the doll satisfactorily and put his hand against the glass in response. Camera close-up of the doll and the boy’s head (Shot length: 10 seconds)

Process:

First, all modeling elements were integrated in a scene for the next step of animating. The main things to notice are the import of model resources, model naming, texturing, and lighting. I optimized the scene size and cleaned up the non-deformation history for the next step.

I changed some shots to accommodate some models’ joints that are not very flexible.

Version one:

Version two:

In this part, through discussions with Cynthia and Jonathan, I focused on the camera’s timing, placement, and operation. The shot’s timing has been changed to partly fast and partly slow instead of flat. To make it look more realistic, I recorded the voice myself to improve and smoothen the character’s lip movements.

In fact, we were not satisfied with finishing the animation because we had no more time to polish the animation. We had to allocate time for rendering, compositing, sound effects, etc. Next, we spent five days rendering all the shots.

Group process:

3D: Finished animation and rendering

2D: Finished the animation of the first shot, some 2D elements that appear in the end credits and shots.

The above pictures and sequence frames are completed jointly by Guowei and Sophia.

The next step:

Sound and Final composition( 3.10 -3.13)

Complete portfolio, rendering video, and process video. (3.12 – 3.14)

Personal process:
This week, I focused on three primary objects: the doll room (modeling), the doll machine, and the doll’s uv and texturing.

Doll’s Texturing

First, I unfolded the doll’s uv and then imported it into Substance Painter to create texture maps.

The doll model’s UV was unfolded in MAYA. Its material are added to the model in Substance Painter. The main map UVs are shown above it. Finally, I returned it to MAYA to paste materials (UDIM).

Toy Machine’s Colour Matching

To make the color of the toy machine more coordinated with that of the doll room, I adopted the color-matching idea of Sophia, a member of our team.

Room Modeling and Compositing

Finally, I spent a lot of time modeling the doll room. Initially, I built the room’s structure entirely by Sophia’s image and achieved the following effect. However, due to time constraints, I could not make some models, and downloaded many decorative materials from the Sketchfab website.

However, some problems were revealed. First, the objects placed in the circular-structured room made the objects look less concentrated; additionally, too many objects placed in the room were elements outside the shot. To reduce the rendering time and optimize the scene resources, I deleted some of them and only kept the objects that would appear in the shot.
Therefore, I made the second version. In the second version, to make the colors of the objects and lighting look more coordinated, I used the second version of Sophia’s color matching, which is better than the previous version.

Group Progress:

2D Design: The first shot of the storyboard (We want to use 2D animation as the beginning of the whole story) (Sophia and Guowei)

3D Modeling, Texturing, Rigging and Lighting (Final version):

1. Doll room, doll machine, doll (me)

2. Carousel, gate (Cynthia)

3. Rigging and Painting weight-shift of the hero, doll. (Jonathan)

We refined the storyboard and updated the script for the subsequent animation work. We want to confirm once again each story shot’s length and motion.

Script

Shot 1: Panoramic view of the gate of the amusement park (2D)

Shot 2: Camera from top to bottom (2-3s) Shot the boy walking into the gate (two steps, walk into the gate 2-3s)

Shot 3: The boy walks to the merry-go-round and stops to watch. (walking 3s+ stopping 2s)

Shot 4: The boy with a happy smiling of holding a rabbit in his hand (4s, waving a rabbit in his arms)

Shot 5: Dancing with a rabbit in front of the merry-go-round (small range movement) (5s)

Shot 6: The boy rotates his body close to the camera, and then the camera goes black (3s)

Shot 7: The boy walks into the room. Camera close-up to the footsteps, following the boy into the room. (3-5s)

Shot 8: (NEW) Instead of shooting the scenes of people, the layout of the toy room is shot with the camera from left to right and then from right to left, which is to shoot with a similar boy perspective. (5s)

Shot 9: With the camera still, take a close-up shot of the doll lying in the toy machine. (3s)

Shot 10: The boy tilted his head and looked closer at the doll. Camera angle: Level up, close-up. Shot the boy from the side and above the shoulder. (4s)

Shot 11: Leaning over the machine, the boy looked at the doll slightly frustratedly and asked, ‘Can you be my friend?’ The camera shot about the shoulder (6s)

Shot 12: The doll nodded and pressed her hand against the glass. The boy looked at the doll satisfactorily and put his hand against the glass in response. Camera close-up of the doll and the boy’s head (10s)

Shot 13: The camera’s long view of the amusement park gate scrolls down to show the rabbit under the light beam. (5s)

Shot 14: Camera Close-up of mangled rabbit. (2s)

Shot 15: Camera Close-up, a man holding the rabbit with one hand (take two steps forward from the camera in the first person perspective, get close to the rabbit, and pull the picked-up rabbit closer to the camera) (5-6s)

The total running time is about 1:30 minutes.

Next Step Work: (3.1-3.5)

3D: Animating

Gate and Carousel section (Shot numbers 2,3,4,5,6,13,14,15,16) (Cynthia and Jonathan)

Doll room (lens number 7,8,9,10,11,12) (Me)

2D: Continue refining the first frame, drawing some elements for end credits.(Guowei and Sophia)

This week I modeled the doll according to the doll design drawing by Guowei.

2D Sketches

3D Modeling (personal process)

I mainly focused on the number of faces and distribution line segments of the doll, which should be paid attention to because of the need for rigging in the later stage. However, the doll’s accessories needed further refinement and enrichment of details through the next step of mapping and material.

Group process:

2D design:

3D modeling:

Next step work: (2.20 -2.26)

2D: The first shot of the storyboard (the effect of the two-dimensional paper-cut and the reversed paper-cut book layer) (Sophia Guowei)

3D: (Integrate all 3D content)

1. Tang: Doll room modeling, doll machine and doll (UV, texture mapping and lighting)

2. Cynthia: Carousel, Gate (Material, Map, uv, Lighting)

3. Jonathan: Hero and doll model (rigging and paint weight shift), rabbit doll (texture map)

Personal process

This week, my main tasks were to design and model the toy machine. I found many pictures of the machine on the websites and drew a rough sketch. Then I made the model.

Since the toy machine is one of the story’s main objects, it would be in the same scene with the hero for a long time. I had to make it more elaborate. I chose different materials such as emission, transparent, and metal parts of the machine. I separately added the Arnord and basic lighting to the machine’s inside and outside to make it look more realistic.

The color matching of the toy machine could be improved to better match the scene’s color tone. The color design will be assigned to the 2D groupmate, Sophia. In the next step, I will add more details about the toy machine.

Group process

2D:

Object design: Amusement park gate

Object design: Doll

The color matching and modification of the hero (Guowei)

3D:

The model of the toy machine (me) (The picture has been presented above)

The model of the carousel (Cynthia)

The texture of the hero (Jonathan)

Next step: (2.15-2.19)

2D: Design the toy machine room and the color matching of the machine (Sophia)

Painting of the carousel (Guowei)

3D:

Doll modeling (me)

Amusement park gate modeling (Cychia)

Rabbit modeling (Jonathan)

This week, we shared the progress of the current project in the collaborative course and enjoyed the brilliant project concepts and production process of other students in this course. It is essential for us to receive inspiration and to reflect on our previous work for the next step of the project through others sharing concepts, progress, and suggestions from teachers and classmates.

Two suggestions were collected:

1. Focus on the storyboard. There are a lot of parts that could be clearer; add more details to make it more accurate. This will help the group work better to distribute specific workload.
2. Due to the large project volume at the beginning of a plan, we should always review the tasks and improve the contents to ensure that our tasks can be carried out as planned and completed on time.

Project progress:

The project changed dramatically, and we scaled back the story. The main focus is on the plot outline, the dialogue of the storyboard, the character’s movements, the expressions, and the setting and lighting environment. After getting some suggestions from George about storyboarding, we nailed down the storyboard and decided on the next step, which were more specific components of our project. For example, we started working on 2D concept painting and 3D production models.

Storyboard:

Story concept:

The idea for the story came from school bullying. In the backstory, the hero is considered odd because of his feminine appearance, so he gets a lot of snubs, jokes, and unfair treatment. The boy’s personality became withdrawn and reclusive. He has been living in a paradise of his imagination, using the facilities as tools to not to be alone. He longs for friends but does not trust them, so he oscillates between destroying them and longing for them. Some toys at the amusement park become targets for the boy to bully.

Group division next step: (2.11-2.14)

2D Object design:

1. The gate of the amusement park 2. The doll 3. The color matching of the hero

(Assigned members: Sophia and Guowei)

3D Object design and modeling:

1. Carousel (Modeling Cynthia)

2. Doll Machine (Modeling) (Me)

3. Character model refinement and materials of character clothing (Jonathan)

Reflection:

During team work, arguments and disagreements occurred quite frequently. But through communication and agreement on different solutions, we will eventually resolve conflicts, and our plans can be executed with higher quality. Secondly, it is vital to specify the task for each person. When we push forward to the next step, we must fully clarify the plan or idea of the previous action before carrying out the next stage of work distribution. Task assignments and work content should be evident to be maintained at smooth progress. Clear and timely communication is crucial.

This week, I participated in a group discussion on character design, story, and to-do lists.

Character design

Character setting concept:

The central theme of the story is school bullying. The protagonist Nimo is a boy who has a traumatic childhood experience. He could not forget this memory; over time, he could not understand the beautiful things in his lonely life.

He has destructive thoughts when he encounters these good things. He became distrustful of intimate connections and became insecure. The character is set up to be a dark person.

We tried a variety of color schemes, such as black and blue, to express this feature physically. Through this, we attempted to contrast the dark inside with the innocent and kind exterior.

Storyboard (First version):

The little boy got lost while playing with his companions. A long time passed, and when it was dark, the boy did not find a playmate, but his lively nature attracted him by the glowing grass, and he burrowed into a new world — the amusement park Kingdom. He looked at the building in disbelief and went inside. But along the way, he was attracted to strange things like horse-faced figures sitting on chairs, talking dolls in doll machines, carousels with severed heads, and laughing funhouse mirrors. The boy was frightened and cried. He tried to get out of the amusement park.

Story concept: The story tries to trick the hero with fantasy rides that allude to bullying. We tried to have this visual way of expressing the inner impact of bullying.

But the current situation is that there are too many shots, and some shots are not connected and need to be clarified. We need to cut out some shots without affecting the expression of the theme and make the story more concise.

Group to-do list:

We put together a general task list to make it easier to assign tasks more clearly.

3D part:

1. Modeling and material paste (object design: amusement park gate, carousel, doll machine, doll, Ferris wheel, etc.)

2. Character binding (Hero rigging, doll rigging)

3. Integrate files in Maya and animating

4. Light and render

5. Compositing and sound effects

2D part:

1. Object design (door, room of toy machine, and carousel)

2. The first shot is presented in the form of a 2D image

3. 2D elements appearing in the shot: musical notes, falling ribbons, potential other elements (not discussed)

4. Sketch at the end of the credits

Group process:

Amusement park map

Character modeling

Character drawing( Painting by Guowei, presented above)

Storyboard (Made by Sophia, presented above)

This week, I participated in the group discussion about scripts, storyboards, and theme determination.

Project theme: Childhood is an essential part of a person. When a person experiences blow, torture, and setbacks in childhood such as school violence or other traumatic behaviors, those will cause irreversible damage to them.

Scripts (Written by Cynthia)

1 The long shot is pulled from the sky to the big screen at the gate of a game theme park. On the screen is the face of the hero, and the content is to attack two targets. The screen flickers. (5s)

2 The hero was surprised to see his picture on the big screen (1s)

3 The hero shows a frightened expression and suddenly looks around. (3s)

4 Some vines reached toward him to wrap around his limbs, and he began to run as fast as he could. (2s)

5 Panoramic – medium shot from the back, the hero crashed through the wall in front of him, the wall like a hole in the paper, and the hero ran into the dark hole. Vines cover the opening (5s)

6 From a distance, the protagonist stands in the center (the protagonist looks up). Inside the hole is a dim children’s playroom (the feeling of a small children’s playroom like a children’s hospital, a children’s area in a shopping mall, or a McDonald’s). The color is a very low saturation of gray and white. (5s)

7 The pictures and cursing characters on the wall float out from the wall and rotate around the hero, forming a tornado of language characters surrounding the hero. (5-8s)

8Mid-view side shot of the protagonist holding his body and crouching (2s)

9Transition shot The room floor begins to sag, the camera pulls up, and the picture slides down. (1s)

10 Medium side shots where the protagonist falls into a pile of action figures (or a room full of action figures). The picture is low saturation and high contrast. (3-4s)

11 The Vista clown doll makes an exaggerated gesture of belly laughter, and the next doll laughs along with it. (5s)

12 The clown suddenly stopped laughing and looked serious. (2s)

13 Close-up – The Joker tilts his neck to the right (close-up) and makes a Kill you gesture with his right hand in a quick swipe from the right side of his neck to the left (close-up). (3s)

14 Transition lens picture from the Joker’s face shot to quick black and white alternating flashing until completely black screen (2s)

15 The hero stumbles slowly onto the stage of the amusement park. (2s)

Storyboard (Drawn by Sophia)

Story content: The boy got separated from his friends while playing as night approached. The attraction of a strange bush digs into an amusement park. He was attracted by the lights and went inside, but the amusement park was not like a typical amusement park as it included facilities that kept frightening the boy. Then the boy noticed a cry for help from the doll inside the machine. He realized that he would become just like this doll if he didn’t escape.

Scripts above drafted by my teammates are two different stories, both of which revolve around bullying and use amusement park pranks to mirror bullying. But the difference is that Cynthia’s version is more intuitive, while Sophia’s version is obscure and full of fantasy. Since we are still in the brainstorming stage, we still need to decide which version to choose. As both versions of the story have a lot of content, we estimate that it will not be completed in a month and will need to be reduced further.

(Supplement) When we finished the later version of the story, I rewrote the discussion. We kept some rides, the merry-go-round, and the toy machine. We loved the interaction between the doll and the hero, generating new ideas.

The new version: the little boy was attracted by the amusement park. He took the rabbit doll into the amusement park, on the side of the merry-go-round, happily jumped up, wandering in the amusement park to a toy machine room. He found a new “friend,” another doll. However, in front of the gate appeared his former toy, the rabbit doll, which was broken and had its stuffing popping out. A stranger walks in, finds the doll, and wants to set out to save the hero:” I will take you home.”

We changed the story a little bit, where the boy was bullied, and he started bullying some of the objects in the amusement park. This behavior is usually seen in destructive children in groups of children. We’ve filled the short story with more twists, making it more concise and exciting than the previous version.

This week I participated in group discussions about project style references and brainstorming project themes.
We chose the fantasy theme and tended to have two styles for reference. The first is a fresh and natural style, for which the guidelines are relatively bright-colored images and lovely roles. The second kind is mysterious style pictures, which involves more dark toned colors such as black and purple, and the atmosphere looks uncanny with fantasy characteristics.

After the group discussion, we selected some keywords for brainstorming.

The group favored the mysterious style of the theme and with which we drafted a rough plan for the scenes. The story takes place in an amusement park, where a little boy gets lost and encounters a series of fantastic things, such as weird clowns, screaming funhouse mirrors, or moving dolls. We chose the dark style as the painting style and connected it with the dark and childhood. Brainstorming is an exciting process where everyone is able to share the style they are interested in and finally reach an agreement.

For our collaborative project, we wanted to make a game promotional video about one minute long. We wanted to emphasize a story and combine 2D and 3D animation elements. Our team has students from both 3D and 2D animation.

Member introduction and team division:

MA 3D Computer Animation
Yaxin Hou Team Leader/Scene Modeling/Textures/Animation/Lighting/composition/sounds
Qiaoqing Yu CharacterModeling/Rigging/Textures/Animation/Lighting/composition
Jiazhuo Tang Scene Modeling/Textures/Animation/Lighting/sounds

MA 2D Animation
Guowei Gou Character Design/Props design/Storyboard/2D animation material
Yinyun Xu Scriptwriter/Storyboard/Scene design/2D animation material