Animation Production

Rough Blocking + References

At this point in the project shots had just been assigned based on the animatic/3D layout and animators are starting to block in some rough poses and ideas while also filming live action references. The main challenge in this piece is the instrument playing, so for the details of playing the music we are also using videos found on the internet. This will help with timing and giving it more authenticity. In this stage, we also had to make sure animation set-ups were mostly consistent in terms of parenting instruments so no problems would arise later.

Blocking

At the end of the first week of animation, the shots all have some blocking and some have already progressed to adding more breakdowns. Some deceptively easy shots are shots 40-60; because they seem easy, animators are struggling to get simple but effective animation and figuring out the exact action sequence desired by the director.

Splining

About over halfway through the project, the shots began to move to spline or partial spline. One clear challenge that presented itself when splining was making sure the strumming and tambourine hits still matched up with the audio. In this edit, there is also some animation being tested with the background characters. Although they would only be silhouettes animated lighting tests seemed to work already in giving the illusion of a community coming together, we wanted to test out adding extra characters joining in.

Final Animation (Before rendering)

Because the animation is being rendered with real-time rendering in Unreal, animators were able to animate up until the last day if necessary. This was the state of the final animations before it went to rendering. Although most animation was finished the weekend before the deadline, some more refinement took place, particularly with making motions fluid and instrument playing believable.