Production 3: Blog Post #7

April 10, 2024

My main focus thus far has continued to be Scene 5 Shot 5 for the short film. After tweaking and refining the camera movement previously, it finally felt smooth enough to move forward.

After successfully doing that, continuing to use my reference from the Guardians of Gahool, I added a sine deformer to replicate the movement of the wind in the feathers of the bird. While this particular effect isn’t necessary in most other shots, for a several-second-long close-up of the bird as it’s moving, the feathers being completely flat takes the viewer out of the film.

A lot of the animation I did after this, mainly the keep alive for the rest of the bird’s body, is also really meant to cause those parts of the bird to fade generally into the background. In previous iterations, the feet and wings stuck out to me because they weren’t moving at all, and I could see them visually stuck in place which was vastly different to the action and motion of the camera. By adding subtle animations to each part of the bird, those elements fade into the background but create a much more visually pleasing shot, even if the viewer will barely notice the animation in question.

This shot was especially difficult due to technical issues; many of the times I was working, despite having a very light scene, everything would move incredibly slowly or crash repeatedly. However, saving often meant I never lost any work, and I ended up using playblasts much more in order to review the changes I had made since the Maya viewport would play them back so choppily.

Ultimately I’m really satisfied with where this shot ended up. It was a fun challenge that stretched my abilities as an animator and introduced me to novel techniques that I want to explore in the future.