Creating a Storyboard

Today we were asked to draw up our storyboard that we wish to create for our animation. The storyboard I decided to draw up was my Amy Rose adventure story.

As I draw out my storyboard a lot of my story and scenes from my original story structure have been change/improve to suit the time of animation needed as my original idea was only 30 to 40 seconds long. New scenes have been added and the story has taken a different turn. Changes have be made in order to make the story longer, however some of the original idea are still being used.

Here are my storyboard scenes in order.

This is the first part of my storyboard, Amy is walking down the street minding her own business when she sees what she thinks is Sonic The Hedgehog her hero. Amy runs over and gives the stranger a big hug, and then quickly realises that this isn't who she thought it was.

 Amy drops the stranger, while doing this the stranger drops a chaos emerald which he then picks back up. The stranger takes a swipe at Amy, and then receives a call within his ear piece, which reveals to the viewers that he is Metal Sonic and his boss is Eggman. 

Amy now angered gets out her hammer, Eggman calls in reinforcements to deal with her. Three Egg bots drop into the scene, one falling on his head and destroying himself. Out of the blue the robots shut down.

Metal Sonic goes offline, and drops the chaos emerald which bounces over to Amy's boot, she's pretty pleased and happy with herself as she thinks she just beat them somehow. A shot goes to Eggmans base and shows him getting very angry and confused over what just happened. The phone on his work desk rings.

Eggman answers the phone, which turns out to be a fake Technical support call from Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails is in the background laughing over the trick they are playing on Eggman. They trick Eggman into thinking they're going to fix his problem he's having with his machines.

Eggman is put on hold with very relaxing lift music playing, after a while he then clicks onto the fact he's been tricked. Eggman gets very angry and turns all his robots back online himself, once done he then tells Metal Sonic to destroy Amy. This is where the scene ends and then goes into the game of Amy fighting Metal Sonic.

Outcome: I know when it comes to animating my actual story, that there will be again some more changes or improvements, but the storyboard that I've created helps keep me on track in what is happening in what scene and when. Creating this storyboard has allowed me to have a better insight into planning and creating an animation scene/movie. Without taking these steps before animating, the story/scene could completely lose the plot or framework, the storyboard helps to keep you in check.

Creating storylines

Today we were asked to come up 3 to 5 story's of a scene with a start middle and end, that needed to be 5 to 3 minutes long. From knowing from the fact we are allowed to use any models we like and scenes, I came up with a couple of idea's all involving existing game characters. 

Story idea

Idea 1.

Beginning- Amy Rose is walking down a street minding her own business, when she notice what she thinks is her hero sonic, she runs over and hugs what she thinks is sonic, only to turns out to be metal sonic 

Middle - Metal sonic and Amy battle it out

End - Amy ends up smashing metal sonic. 

Idea 2. 

Beginning - Kunimitusu is sneaking around and being secret, she is trying to break in a building to steal a gem. 

Middle- she goes to take the gem but as she does security guards appeal

End- she takes out the guards and escapes with the gem

Idea 3. 

Beginning - Lara croft wakes up tired and weak, looks around trying to find survivors, she thinks she on her own on an island. 

Middle - she tries to keep herself alive and struggles. 

End - when she gets to the point of giving up, she turns around and finds an island of people and hotel. 

Idea 4. 

Beginning - Sonic is dancing on the dance floor trying to impress a girl. But is out danced by knuckles 

Middle - Sonic goes to the bar and gets depressed, sonic remembers he has an emerald and uses it to go super sonic 

End - Super Sonic out dances knuckles, and gets the girl.

Final ideas

After we finished thinking about our story ideas, we then got into groups and shared our story's with the group, from sharing the group voted two of the storys from the list of story idea's we had created.

The two story's that Everyone enjoyed was my Amy rose and metal sonic story (idea 1) and my Lara croft joke story (Idea 3). 

Everyone agreed when it comes to expanding the stories that were voted, it will require a phew changes within the story, this is something I will consider when I expand the two stories. 

Expanded Idea's 

Title: Amy Rose Day Out

Act 1

• Amy is walking down the street minding her own business, she is in a good mood
• As she walks down street she see what she thinks is sonic the hedgehog 
• Excited she runs as fast as she can down the street, ignoring the traffic. 
• She grabs what she thinks is sonic from behind, and lifts him up for a big hug. As this is happening Metal Sonic drops an emerald.
• Amy rose quickly realises her mistake and puts Metal Sonic, as she does Metal Sonic knocks her to the ground.

Act 2

• Metal sonic gets a call on his radio to stop messing around with the girl and get out of there with the emerald.
• Amy Rose gets back on her feet and is now angry. 
• Metal Sonic calls in three egg pawns to deal with Amy as he makes his get away. 
• The egg pawns spawn from no where and charge at Amy. Amy is now really angry, she gets out her hammer and hits the first one to the left, the second to the right. The third one is hit on the end, the kicked up into the air. 

Act 3

• Metal sonic get the order to deal with the Amy himself. He charges at Amy, but Amy jumps over metal sonic, hitting his back with her hammer causing metal sonic to hit the floor. 
• Metal sonic stands up, as he does the egg pawn that Amy hit into the air comes back down and lands on Metal Sonic crushing him.
• Metal sonic hand lets go of the emerald which bounces over to Amy feet. 
• Amy wins the battle and get the emerald as well. 
• End

Title: Lara Crofts Vacation

Act 1

• Lara wakes up face down on a beach
• She looks around, she doesn't know where she is. 
• She tries calling out to see if anyone is about, but no one is around, she is scared. 
• She walks around in circles trying to think about what to do. 

Act 2 

• She tries to survive by first making a fire but failing, but the fire doesn't start. She moves onto  hunting for food but fails to get any, she then tries to make shelter for herself, but the hut she tries to build is blown down. 
• Nothing is going right for Lara, she almost give up hope after trying to keep herself going.
• She lies on the sand and stairs at the sky.
• She tells herself that tomorrow she will do better.
• She performs the same tasks again making fire and hunting for food, and making shelter which all fail again. 

Act 3 

• Lara now gives up, she goes to find a cliff to jump off. 
• As she finds a cliff to jump off she looks over and see a hotel
• She had thought this whole time she was on her own but she was actually near a hotel the whole time. 
• She falls the floor in shame and anger after realising their was a hotel near by. 
• End   

Outcome: Having already had lessons in creating a narrative, I feel the stories that I have created here would all be suitable to be made into an animation, granted some may need more what than other but the structure of the story's can still work in the way I want them to. I'm really looking forward to going onto story boarding one of my stories so that I can truly show how my story plays out.

First Attempt At Walk Cycle

We started the day by opening the simple rig from Moodle. Once opened we then clicked auto key to get the animation time line working, and then set key on frame 0 locking the model in an up right pose.

Going Into motion area on the right side of 3Ds Max, and then by going into parameters, I could then create a position key which I set the value to 20. Then moving onto frame 16, I did the same again but the value at -40, this allowed his right foot to move forward.

(Example of legs in set position by value)

His legs didn't look right, he needed his knees bent, so to do this I moved his body down. Now that his knees look correct, his arms however didn't. I needed to move his arms to the correct position as well, this is because when walking the arms swing, so on frame 16 I moved his arms out, one forward, one behind, so his arms would tween from key frame 0.

(Example of knees bent and arms ready to swing)

The first part of the walk was complete from key frame 0 to 16 his right leg moved forward, but only along the floor. We went to frame 8 and lifted his right leg up to bend the knee more, lifting his foot off the ground. Then by bending the toes on his feet, it shows he getting ready for the impact of the floor on frame 16, this made a realistic walk as it shows his foot/leg moving to show a walk. 


We repeated this pattern for the other leg and arms to get two step/walks out of the model. I worked for a little longer on my walk, as I did have some problems when setting keys. I tried my best to make my model move correctly, so by moving his head to the left when his right leg is forward and swinging his body to the right with his leg moving as well, it helped to create a slightly better and realistic walk animation.

(Example of my walk from the side)

 

(Example of walk from the front)

I played around with some other walks such as a march walk, but 3Ds Max crashed and I lost the work, which is why at the end of my walk within the video he then goes into a march walk, but that animation was lost.

Feeling annoyed at my lost work, I tried another walk with a different model, this model is from my computer, I animated again a walk for the model, with all the moving body motions with it, ears, eye brows, spikes, hands legs and feet. Pretty much everything I could move, but his eyes as they were a texture map.

(Example of Shadow The Hedgehog Rig)

Shadow The Hedgehog walk from side (ignore the eyes I had no control over them)

Shadow The Hedgehog walk from front (Ignore the eyes)

Outcome: The walk animation has really made me question and think about how the human body walks and moves, something as simple as walking has a lot of principles behind the movement, from weight, speed, distance, all of which needs to be taken into account to get that realistic walk. I want to practice more in my own time like I did with Shadow The Hedgehog to perfect my walk, and other types of walks to fully understand the animation tasks needed to perform the task.