Research: Animated Stills

I am interested in the idea of animated stills. Animated stills are imagery with very subtle movement. This could bring my environment even more to life and give it more of a forest atmosphere. 

I'd have to teach myself how to achieve this though and it would put a little more pressure on my pipeline. I'll try some experiments and if I feel like it is working for me then I will have my final format as animated stills. 

If I was going to go with this idea I'd keep the animation to a minimum because that isn't the focus of my project. I would maybe have particles in the sunshine floating around or movement in the leaves etc. I'd also want it to loop seemlessly. 

Examples:

Final Project in a Week

Feedback from Tanya:

• The final format could be a storyboard, animated still, five frames to tell a story, a couple of stills, GIFs
• Flesh out your characters to help build the environment (their ambitions, what scares them, makes them happy, job, personality etc)
• Style -you don't have to make everything realistic from this world, it can be a more fantasy realistic environment etc
• Tanya liked the teenage girl and dog story and said I could relate it to dogs harming/killing kiwis in New Zealand forests while off a leash. This is a really good underlying message my project could benefit from. I'll research into that further.

Creating my Project in a Week

These mushrooms are Helemeted Logger mushrooms. These mushrooms grow on the forest floor. Feat. a slug. 

I made the mushrooms more organic and added in some very low poly rocks into the scene. I also imported my creature. For some reason Maya will only render view with RenderMan/RIS. Which is annoying. This will be ok for presentation on Friday though. 

I added Amanita Muscaria mushrooms in the back. I still need to figure out what the rendering problem is... Still rendering with RenderMan but it doesn't look too bad. If worst comes to worst I'll use Renderman and also screenshot the Maya screen.

End result for the day. Added in Slidfrosk's wardrobe and a log in the background. I'm planning on having the majority of this scene modeled up by Friday but not textured and lit properly.

3D Mushroom Reference

I wanted to have a look at already existing 3D models of mushrooms to get an idea of how to model them (looking at topology etc). 

Movie Storyline Ideas

• Death Grim Reaper, death tokens
• Slidfrosk finds something and it takes him on an adventure
• At the end of story Slidfrosk discovers he is dead the whole time
• A child on a treasure hunt finds Slidfrosk, an unlikely friendship blossoms 

Final Story Idea (I need to check with tutors)

• Slidfrosk lives off mushrooms. Mushrooms grow on deadwood and the rotton forest floor. 
• Slidfrosk keeps to himself. Other forest creatures treat him nicely etc he grumbles and walks away. 
• Moody teenage girl walks in the forest all the time with her dog. Slidfrosk gets annoyed at her dog always standing on his house "lawn" so he approches her and tells her off even though its illegal to reveal his species to humans. 
• Over time they becomes friends although he always is in a grumpy mood. 
• Deforestation starts occuring in Slidfrosk's forest during his hibernation season. 
• When he wakes up he discovers that a lot of the forest is gone and the dead wood left behind has mushrooms growing on it. 
• All of Slidfrosk's neighbours are gone as their homes were distroyed. 
• The girl doesn't walk her dog through the forest anymore either. 
• At first Slidfrosk enjoys all his new mushrooms and the silence but over time starts to feel very lonely. 
• On a walk he bumps into the girl and tells her whats wrong. She is upset about the forest too and together they plan to save the rest of the forest. 
• She convinces her father to turn the forest into a sancturay instead of a dead forest. 
• Happy ending. Fin

Mushroom Research

I am really interested in having mushrooms in my environment as they would be perfect for showing my character's size. I researched mushrooms and as it is my own environment and not strickly New Zealand, I looked at mushrooms that aren't from New Zealand too.

I stuck to mushrooms that thrive or only grow in forest environments. 

Jelly Jacket Webcap

Helmeted Logger

Pagoda Leatherbracket

Amanita Muscaria

Agrocybe

Coprinus Comatus

Hericium Coralloides

Lacrymaria Velutina

Psathyrella

Coprinus Atramentarius

Documentation of NZ Bush

I want my environment to be heavily NZ bush based. Because my character is small (about the size of a can) I will focus on the smaller elements of the forests but I will not rule out modeling up trees. (If my character somehow is on a tree branch then I will model that but it depends on my storyline. 

Documentation of New Zealand Bush

Rough Brief

• Using your final creature from Digital Media Studio in semester one, create a story for a movie pitch with them as the main character
• Design the environment to suit the story and character
• 3D model, sculpt, texture, light and render final stills of environment (some with character in them)

Final Creature from Semester One: