Conclusion

 

Overall, I am fairly happy with the final animation. The character I have created is original and I feel would appeal to 4-14 year olds. It also attempts to convey the message of "Make the best of a bad situation”. No matter how many times the blob is knocked down or trodden on, he gets up and moves on. When he realises he can’t get the cake, he is still happy and celebrates his birthday.

The character itself finds ways to show it’s emotion, despite it’s lack of a face. Most of the expression comes from the eyes, but it also shows some human characteristics (yawning, gulping, smiling etc.) as well as animal expressions (wagging it’s “tail”). It has characteristic cartoon motions as well (the eyes growing and shrinking depending on the danger, the jumping for joy at the sight of something it wants).

The character is immediately shown as friendly in the intro sequence as he waves at the camera. His dream of the cake is realised pretty quickly, by his excitement when seeing it. His fears are also pretty obvious, shown in the eyes. His special skill is to be able to transform into most things it sees, and can take a lot of punishment.

This character has potential to be a main character of a story, but more likely will fit as a sidekick.

I had several problems during development that I noted in the individual scenes. Although creating emotion in such an undefined shape was pretty tricky. My first attempts proved promising, but by the time I realised it was harder than it seemed, it was too late to change it or the methods I used. I managed to create some character, and definitely made something that you can feel for.

Some improvements I would like is the ability to manipulate his body to form a mouth. I attempted to use a higher number of control points on a FFD Box, but it caused a large amount of lag on my system. I had a go at using the morpher tool, but had issues with the FFD Box, as it is used so much in the animation and I couldn’t really remove it.

The animation itself I’m proud of, and involved a fair bit of research to get it to the final version. Although it could definitely be improved, the character has been created and the concept is there.

Compilation

I imported all of the assets into Adobe Premier Pro, and positioned the scenes how I wanted them. The total time of the animation is about 1 minute 4 seconds for just the clips. The beginning and end add about 16 seconds. I chose to make the beginning blank so the viewer can focus on the music for a few seconds, and get the feel of the animation first.

The sound effects were added, and the animation was exported as a .f4v file to save space, but preserve quality.

Sounds

 

I added background music which gives a sense of mysteriousness and wondering. – Looking in The Air – Mike Vekris (www.freesoundtrackmusic.com)

The following are sounds to add effect:

Eye “pop” - http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=108616

Yawn - http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=34936 (PitchShifter and EQ effects)

“Squish” - http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=47340

Knock - http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=36789

Thud - http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=108617

Happy birthday music - http://www.nifter.com/music_tracks_loops/birthday_songs/music_box2_happy_birthday_NifterDotCom.wav

All sounds are royalty-free.

Changes

 

Scene 2

The blob now yawns as he is coming out of the drain. Before there was a lack of any facial movement. He raises his arms and his mouth goes in (breathes in).

Scene 6

When the candle raises, and the camera zooms out, the camera wags like a dog’s tail when he’s happy.

Other features

 

Lighting

The lights in the scene were fairly consistent. Since I didn’t want there to be shadows in the scene, to maintain an aspect of cartoonism. It is mainly the default lighting that comes with 3DS Max 2010.

Skybox

The sky is a simple skybox, with a sphere surrounding the scene. It has a material that is self illuminated and 2-sided.

Materials

There is a mix of semi-realistic and cartoony materials in the scenes. The road, drain and pavement have semi-realistic textures that are controlled with a UVW Map and Multi/sub object. This was done so that the viewer can distinguish the scene.

The rest of the scene is block colours, to give it a complete cartoony feel.

http://www.cgtextures.com/getfile.php/AsphaltCloseups0063_2_S.jpg?id=28318&s=s&PHPSESSID=ba90cdcfb6220a89721de975b4de7af4

http://www.cgtextures.com/getfile.php/AsphaltCloseups0113_2_S.jpg?id=59339&s=s&PHPSESSID=ba90cdcfb6220a89721de975b4de7af4

http://www.cgtextures.com/getfile.php/MetalBare0032_M.jpg?id=5493&s=m&PHPSESSID=ba90cdcfb6220a89721de975b4de7af4

http://www.cgtextures.com/getfile.php/Roads0060_3_S.jpg?id=36892&s=s&PHPSESSID=ba90cdcfb6220a89721de975b4de7af4

Final scene (6)

Animation

The blob nuzzles the side of the bowl as it realises it can’t get in. It then moves back slightly and transforms on it’s own into a cake. A candle then appears.

The camera is mainly fixed, and zooms out towards the end.

Character

The blob nuzzles the glass affectionately as if it desires what is inside, but know he can’t get it. As he transforms, the candle rises and it becomes apparent that it’s his birthday. his eyes are placed to give him a happy, but defiant look.

Changes

Initially there was no candle.

Table Scene (5)

Animation

In this scene, the blob finally gets to the cake. He enters the scene hopping towards the table. He stops, and a football hits the side of the table, making the legs collapse. There are a few cartoonish moments here where the table hangs in mid-air, and you see the blob’s eyes duck down, expecting the impact. The table just misses him, and the cake falls next to him. He turns to get it, but the glass bowl lands on top of it, blocking access. He ‘gulps’ and the scene ends.

The animation is done using keyframing, and FFD Box later on in the scene.

The camera is very active in this scene. First it starts off from the cake, and moves round to give a good view of the football hitting the table. It then moves to see the blob’s reaction, and zooms in at the end.

Character

This scene has the most emotion shown in the animation. Firstly, as the table is about to drop, the eyes grow big and duck down inside the body, as if for protection. When it misses, the eyes shrink and the tongue (eyebrows) raise as he smiles.

When he moves towards the cake and is blocked, he pushes up against it and ‘gulps’ in frustration.

Changes

Initially, there were no expressions, and the camera angle wasn’t good enough to get a good view of the reactions I added in.

Pavement Scene (4)

Animation

The scene starts as the blob rolls to the pavement, and rolls up. He gets to the top, only to be stomped on by a jogger. He decides to become a trainer and continue towards his goal.

The main animation on the blob is FFD Box. The jogger is a biped with footsteps set to run. The trainer is attached to the foot of the biped with a link constraint, and the legs are attached to the calf bones.

The camera is motionless until the blob gets squashed, where it moves in, and out as it transforms. It then pans round, to show the front of the blob’s new form, as he bounces towards it.

Character

Once the character becomes a trainer, it smiles as it gets closer to it’s goal of the cake, appearing to be unaffected by this latest squash.

Problems

One main problem is the lag that this scene creates when the FFD Box was added, it becomes incredibly difficult to edit, so I was restricted on what changes I could make.

The combination of the camera movement, and the speed of the scene means that it is hard to notice the blob smiling at the end of the scene.

The blob mesh wouldn’t meshsmooth or turbosmooth for some reason.

Changes

Changed the final camera angle, added a smile.

House/Road Scene (3)

Animation

This scene introduces the blob’s main goal, to seek out the cake. Blob rolls along the road, and slides to a halt as he spots the cake, which is sitting at a table. It jumps in excitement, and it’s eyes expand in that direction.

The camera follows the blob for a few seconds, before panning round and zooming in on the cake.

Character

The blob shows excitement as he starts jumping, and his eyes grow in the direction of the cake.

Changes

Initially there was no animation after stopping.

Road Scene (2)

Animation

The scene starts off with a view of the drain. The blob appears and squeezes through, this is done using a FFD (Box) Spacewarp. He then moves onto the road, a single eye turns around and spots an oncoming car. It grows as it sees the danger, but it’s too late, and the blob is crushed. You see it’s ok as it tries to get up, but ends up being crushed again by the back tyre. From here it gives up and just transforms into a tyre, before rolling off.

The camera follows the blob throughout, changing angles as it gets crushed.

Character

The character shows innocence as it walks into the road, not knowing the danger. As it looks, it shows fear as the eye that sees it grow large. This also shows that it is a creature far from human. It tries in vain to get up as the eye returns to it’s normal position.

Changes

Originally he was simply crushed twice, without any extra animation.

Sewer scene (1)

Animation

This scene uses reactor for the first part. The Plane is slightly angled and the eyes and floor are rigidbodies. One eye rolls down the plane till it hits the other. From here the eyes travel up into the blob till they reach the head. A ripple effect is created using the FFD Box Spacewarp.

They eyes pop out, and I use FFD Box to animate the arm waving.

The camera follows the eye as it rolls and moves through the blob, it then zooms out towards the end.

Character

The main point of this scene is to introduce the character to the viewer. The main show of emotion comes at the end, where the blob cutely waves at the camera before switching to the next scene.

Problems

My first attempt at this was using a softbody to create the ripple effect. However, I believe the mesh was too complex to use, as it glitched and flew off the screen. I also had the problem of the eyes not rolling properly, but this was fixed by adjusting the mass.

Changes

Added the wave.

Making the house

I started out with a cube, and cloned/scaled it to make a smaller version. I used to boolean tool hollow it out. I created a prism to use as the roof, and made a door with the boolean tool. I also made a doorstep with a cube.

To make some windows, I created a large cube, and four smaller cubes. I placed these to create the shape of the window, then cloned all of them to the other side of the house. In order to to through to the inside, I used the proboolean tool to union and subtract the different pieces.

I finished off by adding in a floor, and creating a glass material to add to a plane. This I placed inside the wall across the front section, so it is only visible in the windows.