Sumo Digital Rising Star 2018 - Stage 2 Submission

Introduction:

The main thing is to make sure that each animated segment works individually and as a cohesive whole. The rig I’ve chosen (P. Starostin, 2012) is relatively blank, but it’s a good rig to work with and the fact that there are no secondary visual elements means that there’s nothing to distract from the motion. If I can convey a sense of character with it, I know that I’ve done a decent job that would only be enhanced with extra optical splendour.

As for the contents of the animation, I’ve decided to aim for a drunk character, perhaps with a bottle in hand, going through the process of taking a swing at an opponent. The four stages will therefore be: the character swaying about on his feet; the character seeing his opponent, pointing at him and winding back for the swing; the character taking the swing and nearly being flung to the floor, just keeping his balance; and the character pulling back into his original position, stopping to catch his breath on the way. I think this will be an interesting motion because it will tell you a lot about the character, not only that he’s drunk in this moment but also that he’s brash and a bit of a bruiser who’s not quite as capable as he thinks. It should also just be quite entertaining to watch, enhancing a relatively simple scenario while providing an interesting challenge.

Summation:

Due to unforeseen technical issues, I only had a around week to complete the actual animation. As such, it isn't as refined as I would have liked. Nevertheless, I am pleased with the end result and don't think its time-frame is immediately evident. In a way, having an increased time-pressure was a unique challenge as it allowed me to gain experience of working under a stressful deadline. I feel that the motion is fairly fluid and tells the story of the character, who has a decent amount of personality and is clearly drunk. It follows the brief and is a successful slice of small story-telling. I also think that the render came out pretty well, with a nice back-lighting that could perhaps simulate the warm glow of a pub the character has just exited. There are a few areas I would like to improve. Some of the animation is a little rigid and, as I mentioned, it isn't generally as refined as I would've liked. I think it’s a bit slow, both in general and in some specific areas, which is a result of me sticking too close to the reference video. There is small segment where the bottle passes through the character’s leg, which I didn’t catch until after rendering and didn’t have time to fix. I also ran into a lot of issues surrounding the export process. In the future, I would definitely leave more time for this and also work on the animation for longer, fixing any issues and getting it as refined as possible. I would do a final pass without the reference, speeding up certain segments to give them extra punch. Hopefully, the technical issues wouldn't occur again and I would be able to do the project in a more appropriate amount of time. I am still happy with the work I was able to produce and enjoyed doing it. The experience has compounded my love of animation and my desire to pursue it as a career.

NOTE: As mentioned, I encountered several exporting issues and was unable to produce any usable .FBX files. I have provided the actual 3DS Max files instead. This is also the reason that no Sketchfab link is present, as that site requires .FBX files to function.

Rig :

Starostin, P. (2012). Max [3DS Max Animation Rig]. Retrieved From: http://www.11secondclub.com/resources