Further effort is made for the animatics. Few issues are spotted during the process. First, the rendering performance is quite low and it is difficult to get real-time feedback from the render. With the relative large model, over 100 MB, the rendering with MentalRay can easily consume all the video memory and force to use CPU render due to lack of resources. Maya 2017 keeps crashing with over 20 GB main memory and 1 GB swap memory assigned. It seems the integrity of Maya 2017 is tested and it is less stable than 2016 version. Eventually, we managed to obtain a video clip rendered with Maya 2016 with less quality.

Second, there are some contradictions within the scene. The story was planned during a late night in a remote village. However, the lighting seems less consistent during the render which should be improved in the future. Also, scene happened during the night is generally more difficult to manage since it must be dark while the characters must still be shown.

Third, quality control becomes an issue later on. We had some great ideas and storyboard but to convert them to 3D animation is challenging. Maya is a complicated software and a lot of techniques are unknown to us. It may be better to restrict the project to more specific and practical approach rather than simply hoping to achieve all. Say an example can apply the sound effect to an existing animation. Or create photo realistic scene of a surrounding area. Essentially, when quality is too low for a project, students may not gain much from it even the project trying to cover everything.

We divided tasks to individuals, Mr. Tentacle, Mr. Hot, alien ship, and village environment. Concept modeling is done with low poly style and bright toon shader.

We quickly generated some sketches based on the topic we selected. Highlight include:

• Rendering intro alien ship with close shot to make it huge but reveal it later on which is actually small
• A stand-alone scenario that the alien walk on a frozen lake and fall down due to slippery. Then back to its foot and continue exploring
• The alien becomes happy when poking the snowman and keep doing so
• The alien left earth with flags etc. scattered around the landing site when they run away

Team Formation

We are a team of four, Erik, Claire, Lucky, and Wei where sketching, programming, and broad other design related skills are balanced. From the initial meeting, we quickly communicated that our expectation is maybe not to be the best, but definitely, we want a fine touch animation project generated at the end. Also, we laid a foundation that our project should be easy to be implemented while allowing us to explore different techniques to improve the final results.

Quickly, we decide low-poly is the style we want to go with. Our rationale is that a realistic scene may look good but it lacks variety, i.e. the same scene done by team A will be similar to team B since essentially they result should be as close as to real life which can be dull if it is a daily scenario. Meanwhile, low-poly offers us a completely different view while still allow us to explore conventional techniques.

Initial Ideas

We brainstormed few directions where we may go. One central guide is that avoid complicated scenarios so we can be focusing on storytelling etc. One strategy is the main character can be a creature floating or moving mechanically like a machine so the moving animation can be simplified. Some generated ideas are as follow:

Intense Fishing

The story starts with an overview of a lake scene, two characters are introduced while the camera setting tends to lead the viewer thinking this is a fighting ground. At the climax, instead of start fighting, two characters actually sit down and start fishing. The intense of the scenario reduced dramatically toward the end to give audiences a surprise.

Alien Kidnap

The story starts with a fairly small setup within a normal room. The main character is sleeping, then aliens are moved inside from the window and kidnaped the character. At last, the character is sent back and put to sleep again after the alien experiment is done.

Snowman

Alien visit earth and found a snowman near a small remote town. The alien start exploring and interacting with the snowman. Eventually, the alien is alerted by dropping snow and accidentally shot the snowman then crashed it.

Conclusion

We liked the fishing idea due to the surprise it introduced. However, the fishing requires rendering of water and complicated movement which can be challenging to us. We also like the alien kidnap idea since the main advantage is the story happens within one small room and the alien will probably be floating rather than walking which is easier for us to model. Eventually, we selected the snowman idea since it combines the alien advantage while the snowman is easier to handle. We want to start the project with a relatively simple setup while gradually challenge ourselves moving on.