Charlotte E Animation
Animation Project
The Brief
For this project, I am working on a sci-fi game that's in its early stages of development - so has no concept yet. It is planned to be a robot game inspired by the designs in games such as Metal Gear, Portal, Horizon, Primordia and Fallout. My task is to create a short animation of a robot to demonstrate potential designs. It is my job to model, texture, storyboard, animate and render a robot making a discovery. I am going to conduct research on existing robots and other sci-fi creatures with a focus on those that are simple to model in order to inform the features I want my design to have, such as its stance, poses and motions. I will create 2D initial designs and storyboards and my model in 3DS Max. .
Visual Research:
Sci-fi 3D Models
Jarlan Perez
These robots are apart of Jarlan Perez's ARC Robot collection, featuring 54 different robot designs. I like the vibrancy of these designs and the contrast of the neon and dark colours as well as using complimentary colour pairings. The robots also have clear movement and interesting poses - many of them look like they are making a discovery by looking at the plants and minerals in front of them - as if they are about to lean down to them. The inquisitive look of these robots lends well to my brief and will inspire me when thinking about what my robot should be discovering. Those who do not have any extra props still have interesting movement that matches well with their physique, for example the long crawl of the second bottom image due to the dynamic tube legs. Furthermore, the designs are all very intricate with features like small gaps in each plate of metal, the placement of screws and areas of high use having more paint chipped away. Even the more simple designs have lots of small details making them interesting models. Additionally, I like the use of lights and the eyes on these robots. The lights a few of them have adds practicality and both the torches and reflecting eyes bring a clear focal point to the design. Also, I like the unique look of the robots that have the long wiry limbs compared to the jointed ones. I like the contrast between the smooth movement of the arms and the stiff legs on the third bottom design. Although these designs look great, they may be too detailed for this project, so the features that inspire my own designs will be simplified in my work.
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For my designs, I am inspired by the poses and implied movement of these robots. I am not sure if I am going to focus more on modelling or animation yet, but these models detailed look would be great for focusing on modelling. These robots all have dynamic poses but look as if they are only doing a simple task, so it would be easier to animate the small action with the intricate design. My initial designs and storyboarding should help me decide what I want to focus on more. Additionally, I really like the robotic features like the lights, eyes and metal detailing and I will include these features in my design ideas. I also plan to take inspiration from the neon colours and contrast used in these designs since I like the cyberpunk feel that they have. Finally, in my design ideas I will make some robots with fluid motions and limbs inspired by the tube arms. I may combine this fluidity with other static features and joints to give my robot multiple ways to move.
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Ooblets
Ooblets is a creature-collection farming sim game developed by Glumberland set in the futuristic land of Oob. In the game you farm, collect your ooblets, partake in dance battles, explore the world and help out around the town. The models above are a few of the ooblets you can collect, which have a mix of robotic and organic designs. I like the variety between the designs and the simple yet different expressions they have convey a lot of personality. There is still a sense of unity between each model though with the simple shapes and colour tone, but the colour of the design can also vary with the "unusual" and "gleamy" rarities. I also like the distorted proportions that the designs have, such as the tiny legs and large body on the top left contrasted with the very long legs and small head of the third top image. The unnatural proportions give them a cute look and makes them seem more alien and otherworldly. Furthermore, I like that a lot of the designs are more organic and have clear inspirations from other plants and animals, such as the bottom right ooblet - Petula - which resembles an opening flower. This also fits them into the sci-fi genre with the changed and unnatural designs of other nature. In regards to the robotic designs, I like the simplicity of them as well as the roundness they have. I like the the antenna as a design feature and might include that in some of my robot designs. Compared to Perez's designs, these models are very static which I don't like as much since they need to be making a discovery and moving in my animation. In the game, all the ooblets walk the same way and have the same dance moves as each other, although they do have one signature dance move. I think it would have been very interesting if each ooblet had a different walking animation to further convey its personality outside of its still design.
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For my own designs, I am inspired to create both robotic and organic creatures in my development. I am unsure yet if I want to focus more on the modelling or animation aspect of this project: I really like the simple and cute style of these models, so if I were to model something similar to this, it would be easier and would allow me to focus more on the animation that it will have. Furthermore, for my robot designs I will create some that include the antenna that I like on these as well as the round edges that make them more unique than other robots that are very boxy. In my organic creature designs, I hope to convey that alien look of some of the ooblets. I will try to do this by making some just unnatural looking, but others will be influenced by exiting plants and animals similarly to some of the ooblets above. I also want my organic designs to have fun expressions that convey personality, so I will take inspiration from the variety of faces that these designs have.
Visual Research:
Animation and Movement
Here I watched 3 different robot animations: YuRen Tseng's pirate robot, Arcane Jinx's weapons and Netflix's Eden. I watched them to look at different ways the robots move in a variety of 3D animation styles.
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Pirate:
In these animations, they all feature the main pirate robot but also a variety of others such as the depicted lift, bugs and giant. These short scenes all focus on the robots doing one smooth action - for example the pirate taking a shot at the big red robot. The movements are all very fluid and natural looking and paired with the sideways moving camera shot, create a organic and captivating effect. You can also clearly see where different robots are moving from and this is influenced by their environment, like a robot on a propeller being blown in the wind. I really like the smoothness of this animation and how the characters interact with the scenery around them.
Arcane:
In this show, I am focusing on Jinx's robotic weapon inventions. These robots are controlled by a person so do not have lots of overall movement, but the parts that do move - mostly the mouths and limbs - are very jolty and mechanical. They move stiffly and jitter a lot, representing their home made nature and matching the character. They fit a classic robotic style with their movement and overall exposed metal and gear design. This kind of movement would be good for an old or damaged robot design since the stiffness makes it feel more inorganic.
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Eden:
There is a mix of both stiff and smooth robot animations in this show. The parent robots move rather inorganically from the joints, giving the classically robotic vibe as well as seeming more harmless. The evil ones walk with a more human like stature - making him seem more threatening and advanced compared to the worker/parent robots. There are a variety of robot designs in the mini-series with a mixture of movements that connote to their ability and strength.​
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Looking at the variety of movements, I am leaning more towards the smooth and fluid movements for my design - so I will make robots with bendable parts as well as organic creatures that move in a lively way. I will still experiment with stiff movements, but in my initial designs I will have greater focus on the former.
Initial Designs
When making my designs, I took inspiration from my research by making a mixture of simple organic creatures similar to ooblets, detailed robots like Jarlan Perez's and then I combined the ideas to make some cute robot designs as well. I was further inspired by other creatures - for example the worm and snail as I said I would try. I also used both static and fluid movement ideas in my designs, such as the stiff joints and wires compared to the tubing and organic limbs. Additionally, I created a mood board containing references from my research as well as some other robot designs that I was previously inspired by in my Robot Design Project. Overall, I am more drawn to the simpler cute designs I made that are both organic and robotic then the detailed robots. I have decided I want to focus more on having a fun and detailed animation than the 3D Modelling so that I can develop my skills in something I haven't tried before. My next step is to develop a few of my robot designs with a focus on movement in order to decide which one to animate.
Design Development:
Propeller Robot
Here I made a few different iterations of a robot with a propellor. I took inspiration from Jarlan Perez's neon colours for these designs. I am uncertain of which colour scheme I will pick as I like the combination of the bright blue and yellow, but I also like the red design's contrast as having just the one bright colour stands out well against the greys. In regard to the designs shape I took inspiration from the cute rounded shapes of ooblets. After looking at the differences, I have decided on having three propellor prongs and a spherical base with no wires. As for animation, I aim to follow the smooth movements of the pirate robot in my research. I think that there are lots of opportunities for animating this design. I plan to make the propellor spin to carry it around, the tube arms move as it does its action with the jointed fingers being more static and since its face is a screen, there are lots of interesting expressions it could potentially make. For the animation itself, my initial idea is that the robot would fly about looking at its surroundings, before going to the ground and grabbing something. When I start storyboarding I will put more detail into my idea as well as extra ideas so that it shows all the different movements the robot can make.
Design Development:
Bell-Shaped Alien
For this design, I created some iterations of a little alien with a bell or cupcake looking design. Once again, I looked at the bright colours from Jarlan Perez's robots as well as the green and yellows used a lot in Ooblets. I made some different colour schemes with this that give them looks like a bell, bluebell and cupcake: I am leaning more towards the yellow or pink designs but will experiment when I storyboard. For the shape, I was influenced by the ooblets characters and their simple, cute, rounded look. I experimented with different limb lengths to find my favourite which is the short legs and long tube arms. Additionally, I looked at how to body will change when they are surprised by making changes to the expression and the frills. For the animation, I once again want to have smooth movements similar to the Pirate Robot since it is an organic creature. My initial idea for the animation is to have the alien be walking around, before picking something up and opening it, causing surprise and showcasing the different appearance. I will add more detail and try other ideas when storyboarding but I mainly want to show off the wiggly limbs, expressive face, moving antenna and how they become surprised.
Storyboards
I began my storyboarding by coming up with 4 ideas for each of my designs to help me decide which one to develop into a full storyboard. I wrote some notes and made some very quick sketches to give an idea of what the animation might look like.
I decided to develop the ideas of the robot pushing off the ground and the alien spinning and tripping on their legs. For the robots movement, I used the tube arms that I liked from Jarlan Perez's robots and I imagine the movements to be smooth like the Robot Pirate since the limbs are bendy and the propeller moves consistently. For the alien, I had a similar thought process with the moving limbs and smooth motion but there will be more sudden stops as they fall. After making both storyboards, I have decided that I am going to model and animate the alien since I think its more fun looking and has a simpler model so I can put more focus on the animation.
Final Design Development:
Modelling and Painting
I began making the base of my model and the limbs, but I realised after making them bendy that the initial position has to have everything be straight in order for it to be easily animated, so I went back and remade most of the shapes. This was still helpful though even though I had done it wrong since I could see how many joints the alien would need as well as getting a visual early on of what the animation of the tube arms could look like. I also experimented with making a more detailed hand but l eventually changed it back to the simplified sphere.
Here I remade the limbs so that they are straight for animating. Here is where, I made the more simplified sphere hand like my original design for the alien and I also cut the hemisphere in half in order to just make the model symmetrical at the end. Next, I began to build the main body section and attach the limbs to the base body.
This is where I built the main body and antenna segments as well as attaching and bridging all of the separate objects together. I ran into a few issues where I had miscounted the number of edges early on with each object, so I had to go back and edit and remake some of the base objects once again in order for them to easily attach to the rest. I also added some more roundness to the body after looking at my reference image again and finding my model was too stiff compared to the organic look I want my alien to have. Next, I needed to make the face and apply a symmetry modifier to my model.
Here I finished my model through adding the face, making it symmetrical and applying smoothness to it. Additionally, I added in the lines on the base body depicted in my drawings by making indents into them. Next I exported my model into substance painter but had to do it a few times since I noticed an issue with the geometry only after baking the model where it had random holes and spikes in it. I resolved this by cutting the lines together and making more vertices so the whole model was even. Next I went into substance painter to add colours and texture to my alien.
I decided on using the cupcake style colour pallet from my design development since I think it looked the cutest and the lines in the base as well as the light on the antenna matched this theme well. I was worried that texturing it simply would not make the model interesting enough, but after experimenting with some base textures it looked unnatural for it to be too realistic so I settled on keeping it simple but changing a few things to make them look more exciting. I decided to make the the limbs green to match the antenna as the dark colour didn't look as good with the lack of outlines in 3D. Some other edits I made to make it more visually interesting in 3D were adding a light to dark gradient on all of the green pieces, adding blush to the face, making the tip of the antenna emit light and giving a shine to the eyes to make it more organic even though its a very simple model. Towards the end of colouring, I realised there was still an indent in the base that I hadn't noticed before, but since I was at the end of my painting I decided to leave it since its not very noticeable from most angles. My next step was to import my model back into 3DS Max in order to make my final animation.
Final Design Development:
Animating
I began by importing my new unwrapped model from Substance Painter into 3DS Max and applied my textures. I ran into an issue where the whites of the eyes had shadowed areas baked into the model that were showing at the edge of the eyes. I could either bake and texture the eyes again or just move them back. I chose the easier option and adjusted the location of the eyes slightly so that the black couldn't be seen.
I chose to use CAT to make my animation. I began by making the skeleton of the model, with lots of arm joints to make it wiggly and keeping the main body solid. Once this was done I used a skin modifier to connect it to the bones and adjusted the weight of each bone on the model both manually and with a heatmap. Following this I need to join the face to the main body so they remain connected whilst keeping the eyes expressive.
This is where I parent - child linked my pupils to the eye whites and the eyes, brows and mouth to the body. I tested some movements and found that some large movements cause the eyes to appear further away from the face, but that shouldn't be an issue with what I am animating. At this point I noticed issues with the legs where they weren't bending properly. This was due to the bones being stacked on each other at an angle when they should have been more similar to the arms where they were straight. I decided to remake them so I had to skin, weight and parent link the model again in order to fix the issue, making the skeleton on the right.
At this point, I decided that I didn't want to animate the alien spinning around since I really liked the bendy zig-zag shape the arms made in the 3d model and thought another action would show this better than my original smooth arms. Additionally, I remembered that the brief wanted the character to make a discovery - so instead I made a new plan where the alien would discover it has an antenna for the first time. I wrote this plan out, showing how many frames in a 25fps animation and the amount of seconds each action in the sequence would take.
I progressed with my animation, deciding to change the order in which the reaching for the antenna occurred. The order became reaching around for the antenna, stopping to think about what to do next, coming up with the idea and jumping to reach only to miss and end up tired. I ran into some issues with pacing but just moved the keyframes around until things looked more natural. My next steps are to animate the parent - child linked eyes and frame everything.
As I was working on the animation with the body transparent, I didn't notice that my textures were the opposite way round and the face had been moved to the back of the model at some point and the blush was then on the back. To fix this issue, I applied an Unwrap UVW modifier to the body and used the UV editor to select the area where I wanted the blush to be on the correct side of the face and move them into the space where the blush was on the texture map. This didn't get rid of the blush on the back, but it wont be seen in my animation anyway.
I chose a space background from Bee and PuppyCat to be my backdrop. After setting up the camera, I tested rendering it and the texture looked folded and broken. I expect this happened from messing with the UV to move the blush. To solve this issue, I made new materials and assigned the ID's to each section of the model with an edit poly. I tried to get the textures as similar as possible, only keeping the original face and emissive antenna.
The final adjustments I made before rendering were adding in the light sources, tweaking the reflectiveness of the eyes, making sure the camera angle was correct and rendering a few frames to check the end result. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the way to solve an issue I had with black lines appearing on the arms: I tried changing the animation, checking the UV, changing the texture and adjusting light around them but they always stayed visible. My last step is to complete the render and combine all the frames into my final animation using After Effects.
Final Design and Evaluation
Research
​The brief for this project was to create a 30 second animation of a robot making a discover. I chose to research the game ooblets as well as the artist Jarlan Perez. This research informed my initial designs by showing me multiple options for my design. For my first idea, I wanted to create a bright robotic design similar to Perez's work but make it slightly more simple following ooblets style. Additionally, my other idea was to create a simple organic alien creature like those from ooblets with the movement and interesting posing of Perez's. Additionally, I also researched a variety of animated movement from Arcane, Eden and a Robot Pirate. These ranged from clunky and more robotic to smooth and organic. This researched helped my inform that I wanted to animate something with smooth movements. Furthermore, the design features I liked most from this research were the bending limbs, lights, a combination of static and fluid features and fun faces. These features each show up in my final design with the glowing antenna, simple smiling face and the wiggling arms alongside the single mass for the alien's main body. My research informed my initial 2D designs well, but once I saw it in a 3D space I did make changes - for example the arms being more of a zig zag than flowing tube at the end. Overall, my research helped me decide what features I wanted in my design although I wish I had looked at more animation references because throughout my process I changed my animation idea a few times and I think if I had done more research I would have had less issues deciding what to do.
Design and Process
This project was to make a sci-fi design and I think I managed this with my alien. I used multiple mediums throughout my process, beginning with pencil sketches then developing digitally before modelling in 3D for my final design. I originally struggled to decide which of my designs to pick from but I asked my peers what they thought and it was agreed that the alien had a more interesting animation idea so I went with that choice. Furthermore, I ended up changing my original storyboard idea after rereading the brief so that there would be a discovery being made - but I could have developed this discovery further by having the alien interact with something else in the scene rather than just itself and making a storyboard for this new idea rather than juts writing it. I found myself running into issues once I began animating. I had problems with the eyes, the CAT and the textures. I mostly managed to find fixes for these issues - such as moving the eyes back and redoing the rig but it seemed as if every fix I made for the textures caused a new issue. For instance, I fixed the issue with the blush on the back by moving it on the map, but doing that caused the textures to not render properly anymore. I managed to deal with most issues but ended up ignoring one where there were black marks on the arms. I was reaching the project deadline at this point so chose to just leave them in but in the future I would try a find out what caused this and deal with the problem. I enjoyed my initial design process since I could experiment with lots of designs but found the 3D process frustrating due to the problems I ran into. I am still happy with my final result though.
In conclusion, I liked this project since I got to try 3D animation for the first time as well as getting to attempt all parts of the animating process. If I were to do this project again, I would have liked to make the face more moveable by somehow rigging it as well. If I had done that I could have moved the pupils with more ease as well as changing the mouth shape from just a smile more easily. Additionally, I would have liked to have included the opening frills when the alien was surprised in my animation since I just made my model from my reference image, not thinking about the extra space that would be needed for them to open up. Finally, I would try to solve the last issues showing up in my animation.
Reference list:
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Allegri, N. (2022). Star Background. Bee and PuppyCat: Lazy in Space. Available at: https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/966796245008369553/ [Accessed 31 Jan. 2025].
Arcane, (2021). Netflix Jinx’s weapon models.
Eden, (2021). Netflix Robot Stills.
Gumberland (2022). Ooblets. [3D Digital] Available at: https://ooblets.fandom.com/wiki/Ooblets [Accessed 10 Dec. 2024]. Ooblets Game 3D Models.
Perez, J. (2020). ARC Robots. [3D Digital] Available at: https://www.jarlanperez.com/ [Accessed 10 Dec. 2024].
Tseng, Y. (2024). Pirate Robot Animations. [3D Animation] Available at: https://www.artstation.com/khoitdie [Accessed 11 Dec. 2024].