THE TASK
To create an animated short based on the theme of Bravery. We were sorted into teams, and I’m working with Natasha, Ronan and Lauren.
IDEAS
We threw around a few different ideas involving an astronaut, forest spirits, karaoke night… But eventually settled on the idea of a little mouse on a hunt for some cheese. We wanted to tell a story of an orphan mouse and a rat, racing for some cheese in a mousetrap but have a bit more of a comedy aspect. We also decided to have it set at Christmas so we could play more with warm lighting, and also just ’cause it’s Christmas!
ANIMATIC & CONCEPTS
We split the animatic into four parts, and I worked on the ending scenes:
INSPIRATION/RESEARCH
We looked a different mouse and rat characters from existing animations and all agreed that mouse should look as cute as possible to convey innocence as he’s a little baby. And the rat should look buff and tough, and look like a threat to our mouse boy.
As for modelling style, we looked into small models from Sylvanian Families toys as we liked the blocky style. I found miniature models of living rooms on Pinterest, and we all liked the asymmetric style however agreed that softer edges were the way to go. So we then looked into Dr. Suess’ work and the style from his stories
MY ROLE
Me and Lauren divided both environments between us and set a deadline of 2 weeks to allow us to model and UV the assets. I did a few concept doodles to help me when it came to modelling.
FINISHED MODELS
ENVIRONMENT
I also worked on making the environment and arranging the scenes and the assets within the living room as well as the mouse house
ARNOLD TOON SHADER
I found the official site (Arnold Toon Shader) to be extremely helpful. And practised the toon shader on a sphere first before using it on my modelled pieces.
CAMERA
Natasha then looked into camera angles to make sure that the layout worked with what we wanted to ‘film’. This then led to us practising with the rigs and the actual animation. Natasha modelled and rigged Eli the Mouse, and Ronan modelled and rigged the Rat.
ANIMATION PROCESS
We split the animation into 4 sections, and I worked on the final scenes of the animated short
PLAYBLAST OF OTHER TRAP
FINAL ANIMATION
The final animation was edited and put together by Natasha
Animation Blog 