Idea of Creature Animation module

It is that time of the module where we have to come up with ideas for our assignment. Here we are looking at a brief that requires us to animate a creature to create a realistic animation with a time range of 7 to 12 seconds. First thing I investigated was the Rigs I had access to, in terms of 3D Animation this is a very important factor as the quality of Animation also relies on how good your rig.

While looking through the Rigs our tutor provided us I remembered that I had a cat at home (Mirruñas), there are various reasons why I could use a cat for my animation, 1, I have a cat at home and I can get Primary live action reference which I think is very good as I don’t have to spend a lot of time trying to search for the perfect reference in the vast internet, 2, I love cats and I believe a lot more people like cats too so I would be animating an animal I really like while ensuring an audience for my animation.

Creature is now set but what is also key for a good Animation? Of course the story. I normally leave 2 to 3 days to think about a story and in the process I have various ideas but only keep the one I can’t take off my mind and keep on developing on. I started writing my idea on Procreate with a few sketches of what I had in mind.

After story is done I then start to set it up in my head and translate it into something tangible, a few thumbnails to make sure story make sense and start to think about the layout and cameras.

After thumbnails the next step was to collect live action references. At the start it was a challenge because I couldn’t tell my cat what to do so had to find a way of getting around this; treats are the key to working with animals. I choose a place to put my phone where the composition was somehow close to what I had done in my thumbnail, I directed my father to stay next to where the camera was recording and call Mirruñas with the bag of treats when he came back to me from eating the treat I had thrown across the hallway.

This is a wip of the layout: