Wylder Production Diary 07
Welcome back and here we go on week seven. To recap, we’ve been working on an internally produced, animated short film, based on a children’s book by local writer and illustrator Maia Walczack.
We started this back in April and now have all of the key characters and environments, which can only mean one thing. It’s animation time!
Often the start of the animation process features a lot of trial and error whilst getting used to the controls on each of the characters, as the rigs will vary depending on size, shape and animation needs. There may also be skinning issues that make movement look a little odd. They are usually pretty easy to spot!
Dad’s Irish Jig
In one scene, the boy and his Dad plant vegetables in their veg patch and as the seasons pass, the plants grow. We wanted to create a time lapse effect as the environment changes from day to night, winter to summer.
Our YouTube histories are full of plant time-lapses as we figure out the best way to show this, balancing a realistic growth and making it look nice (we find that it starts off beautiful and then actually becomes quite messy once all the leaves grow in). We also wanted to capture the wonder of a child watching how something grows from a seed.
Animation in Unreal usually begins in the previz environment, and will be substituted for the final environment later on, meaning that all the finishing touches to characters, environment, lighting and effects can come together in one step.
And of course meanwhile, the prop creation still continues, though we are getting really close now, finally. It’s been a Herculean effort of a one-man team working through the extensive list.
By the end of the week, we hope to have all the props and a first animation pass on every shot. That would then allow us to go through everything on Monday and check what needs fixing, changing or prioritising.
The first animation round usually covers the key movements, but there is endless noodling that can be done in terms of performance of the characters. We have been building a “Nice To Have” list during production where we note down little extras that will add to the final piece if we have time at the final stages. (We can’t help ourselves sometimes though and a few have already been done).
This means that by next week we can hope to start on post-production on the first few shots that have gone through animation polishing. Then we can start replacing the previz shots with final ones and watch the short come together! Hold on tight, things are about to get super exciting.