BITTER
Undergraduate Thesis Film for VFX BFA. Responsible for all aspects.
Introducing my SCAD senior thesis film, Bitter! A stylized animation short featuring a bitter duel between boy and snowman in the bitter cold. The project took around six months to complete, from ideation to final output. My process is documented below! It is organized from most recent to early stages, so later stage previs are at the top, and inspiration for the project is at the bottom of the page.
Previs & Shot Scheduling
Here are two previs videos at different stages of development. Shots were taken directly from the storyboard, then animation was slowly added in. Timing and shot composition also improved with each cut.
This was the working schedule I used during the animation process. The boy's animation was mostly from Mixamo with lots of editing done on my end. The snowman was entirely animated by me.
The shot schedule includes the type of shot, camera lens used, duration, camera move, and more. I felt it was important to have all this information organized so it could be pulled up for quick reference.
A big challenge I had with this film (which I did not forsee prior to its happenstance), was rendering. With the amount of xgen in the scene, render times became impossibly long. The solution was to render each scene aspect out separately. So, the snowman, the boy, the ground, and the trees all had their own render file. This development added quite a bit of time to the project and was a learning moment for sure.
Expression Sheets
Here's a snapshot of all the snowman's eyebrow and mouth movements. I made seven variations of eyebrows and ten mouth variations. His main expressions are angry and happy, pretty simple.
With this film, I wanted to go with a stop-motion approach to the expressions. Rather than using blend shapes or lattices to control the eyebrows and mouth, I made different geometry layers for each in-between. Animation was done by toggling visibility. The effect that the expressions were being entirely switched out was created.
Here are all the boy's eyebrow and eyelid stages. There are 16 different eyebow stages and five eyelid stages. The four main emotional states reflected in the eyebrows are neutrality, anger, concern, and determination. There are roughly three in-between stages for each emotional shift.
Lookdev Testing
From the beginning, I knew the boys face would be hand-painted and the clothes would be entirely hair gen. I kept the base material for the clothing simple, and assigned colored noise that would lend itself to the xgen hair.
The face and eyes were incredibly fun to paint. I wanted them to have a handcrafted feel, so I let some of the brushstrokes be rough and visible. Substance Painter had a lot of great brushes for that kind of thing.
Here is an early test of the xgen clothing. The final version ended up being a lot more dense and a bit less saturated.
In addition to the characters, the environment was also covered with xgen. This was another early test. I ended up going in a different direction with the trunks, making them look like twisted brown paper instead.
Boy Modeling
The modeling of the boy consisted of going back and forth between ZBrush and Maya. I created the initial shapes in Maya, then took them into ZBrush to add details. The video above shows the boy model in progress.
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Here is the coat closer up as well as a more finalized version of the pants:
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These were my main references for the jacket. I liked the idea of having a big, puffy red coat being the main focus of the boy.
Here is the boy's sculpt nearly completed! I had hardly used the program before this project, but I had a fun time with it.
I initially created this boy as a stop motion puppet and learned a great deal about the aesthetic and mechanisms needed for him to appear the way I wanted him to. If you want to see more of this guy's stop motion journey, check it out here!
Snowman proof of concept
A little proof of concept I did with the snowman character! I wanted to test his motion as well as preliminary look development. The result is pretty cute, but the final look ended up being a lot more rooted in realism.
Snowman Motion
When thinking of how the snowman should move, I came to the conclusion that a rotating base should drive its movement. Like Star Wars' BB8! An initial idea was that it could slowly shuffle around somehow, but that did not work story-wise. This snowman character has to be able to move around fast and be able to proficiently fight. Thus, the BB8 approach.
I had found these preliminary BB8 tests online and made some notes. Also found some digital motion tests which was cool to see!
Now onto my guy! I created a basic layout for how I wanted the snowman to move:
The sketch is pretty self explanatory, and would only require some simple parent constraints. Here's what I was able to do with the rig:
Felt Look Development
A big challenge with this project was getting the felt/woolen texture down. Nearly everything in the scene would be covered with this material, so I had to get it exactly the way I wanted it. I ultimately ended up using XGen in Maya for the final approach. Here are some test renders:
Node breakdown:
The base color is basically just two different colors brought together in a noise mix. This coloration is also connected to subsurface color. The hair shaders are also linked to these colors.
Here was my first attempt with the material. I created this one in Houdini with Redshift, playing with hair generation.
For this attempt, I thought the hair strands were too thick and uniform. I also think it is a tad bit too reflective. Felt does have this reflective quality in the strands, its just too much here. I think what I produced is an interesting material, it just doesn't feel like felt.
Inspiration
From the beginning, I was leaning towards this felt, textured style for the scene. I think having a needle felt look in a winter scene gives off a cozy feeling and brings along memories of childhood.
Sweet Pea Dolls
While looking into felt scenes, I stumbled across this music video animated by Andrea Love. It involves a cute story about two felt bunnies. This style is what I was aiming for. I really liked how it is grounded in reality and you can even tell how some of the props were made- for example the tree with leaves of draped thread. By using these recognizable objects, the scene feels cozy and safe. Here's a few shots I liked in particular that I found inspiration from:
Something I want to look more into is this snow. It looks like cotton to me, painted/dyed in some areas to mimic depth. The way the snow reacts to the character and props is also quite fun. When the character attempts to climb the snowy hill, puffs of cotton fall back on him. This further sells the realism of the space making it a believable environment. This technique could be something to think about as I am having my characters moving around my scene.
The stylization of the house is also something I could draw inspiration from. The framing, scale, colors, textures (so many different aspects!) of this shot really sell that homey, cozy feel. In my project, I want to have a shot where we see the boy's mother in the window of the house. Though the main portion of my story takes place in a snowy forest a distance away from the house, it is still important to consider the greater world in which my character resides. What would the buildings look like? What would animals look like? What would the setting look like without all the snow? I really want to sell the visual development of this scene, and having these worldbuilding thoughts sorted out is definitely something I should do moving forward.
