Doing Some Environment Test Renders

 

I'm currently in the process of modelling and texturing the environment that I plan to use in the short film for my assignment. While not everything is complete yet, I felt it was important to get some test renders done to make sure everything fit together nicely and the textures I had done so far are working properly. As you can probably notice in these renders, it looks somewhat different to the concept sketches from a few weeks ago. This is because I found that some of the models I originally planned to use either didn't work, or would take too long to texture so were swapped out in the interest of time management. Perhaps the biggest change so far is the wall texture. I had originally planned on putting in stars but when I was working on the texture in Krita, I realised it would take so much time drawing and perfecting all different size stars that I made a switch to clouds and was able to complete that much faster.

Another noticeable change from the concept art is that the middle drawer on this dresser is closed, but in the concept art, it's open. This is because I couldn't find a way that it would look when modelled that I would be completely happy with so I have put that idea on hold for now but if I have time before I need to begin rendering, then I will go back and try again. If however, I do not have time, I will still be able to follow the original storyboards with the ball falling down and knocking over the blocks as this minor change will not affect the over all narrative of the piece.

As I mentioned in previous posts, my main inspiration for the environment - and story as a whole is Toy Story and right now, there are a lot of very obvious nods to that on display including posters and even the duvet on the bed all of which I found through a Google Images search. I am hoping to change at least one of the posters on the wall to a piece of concept art I drew for one of the characters so that it ties in better as well as the duvet because in my mind having a Buzz Lightyear one when his character model isn't anywhere in the scene, doesn't make any sense to me - but they will do for now for placeholder images

Something else that I'm still trying to get right is the lighting. Right now all I have in there is some skydome lights and a spotlight under the bed to illuminate the character model that currently resides there. These lighting choices are far from final but were helpful in pointing out problem areas that I can focus on when I'm working on the final lighting let up.

This is also the first time I've brought all of the character models I made into the same scene. Up until now, they had been worked on in isolation in their own Maya files so seeing them all brought into the same scene is a huge step towards getting the project completed. In saying that though, I still have some textures to work on and some models to finish so I better get going on that!

Piecing Together The Story - And The Storyboard

 

Using the unfinished concept art sketches for the films environment, I was able to put together a very rough storyboard for the film. In doing so, this is the story that I have determined that I would like to tell;

• The small robot pushes or knocks a ball off the top of the dresser
• The ball bounces off the open dresser drawer
• The ball hits the floor, rolls and knocks down the alphabet blocks
• The Poke-Bot flies out from underneath the bed
• The Poke-Bot flies in a circle around the alphabet blocks
• The Poke-Bot fixes the alphabet blocks to spell out my name
• The Poke-Bot flies around the blocks again to inspect them
• The Poke-Bot flies back under the bed
• Camera zooms from the top of the bed towards the robot that caused the blocks to fall
• The robot looks around and waves
• The film ends

With a story now firmly in mind - I will try to create an animatic of the film once I finalise what sound effects or music I'd like to use in the finished piece. I am also continuing to work on finalising the colour scheme for the environment concept art. 

Poke-Bot Concept Art

 

The next piece of concept art I created was the final character I would be including in my film - a character I'm calling a Poke-Bot.

A couple of weeks ago during one of our initial modelling lessons I created a Pokeball. It had occurred to me when I was starting to piece together what the story of my film would be - that I could use this model in some way in the film. I determined that I could use the Pokeball as a base for creating a flying robot character that could in some way advance the narrative.

This was the quickest, and most straightforward pieces of concept art I had done because I already knew the basic shape - I just had to focus on the details. For that, all I did was embellish the mechanisms of the original pokeball design and the way it works in the show/game the pokeball comes from.

I decided to keep the colour scheme as close as possible to the original inspiration as I believe that colour combination works really well together.

With that drawing complete, I began to think about how I would  incorporate my name into the film. I had a few ideas - I just had to settle on one of them...