Ted Stapletons University Blog

 

  I think this is one of the toughest projects I have ever undertaken in my time in education. I have felt both scared and stressed out believing I will fail this whole course if I even remotely submitted anything subpar and thus fail at having a career in animation. Not helping was the Covid pandemic which has greatly affected the university, my mental health, my course, my family, among much more. While I think I am likely to pass the course now that I have submitted all the necessary components for my major project, needless to say there is quite a bit I wish I could have done better. The reason I believe for a lot of this was simply time. Some was out of my control other times I feel I could have done something to help myself give a better outcome of the project. I cannot help but feel that while it could've gone a lot worse my project could've been a lot better if I had a bit more time such as having better time management and stopping myself from procrastinating as often....

    A Viking's Tale The goal and concept of my film called A Vikings Tale sees the story of Gorm. He sits in the tavern in front of an audience telling his tale of how he singlehandedly demolished the Saxon defenders of England during a raid. The story is one of comedy as we see that Gorm only survived his encounter with the Saxons because of dumb luck. It is revealed at the end of the short that he was simply rehearsing in front of a bunch of dolls. As he checks the proper pronounciation of 'England' the door to the tavern opens up revealing the true audience much to Gorms dismay.  The outcome of this short film was to create a character focused animation with influence from Slapstick comedies and stop motion animation. Due to factors some of which i think i could of done better I didnt get the whole film completed with maybe a little over 50 percent of it animated. However, I did get my Production Bible and demo reels of my two main characters completed while demonst...

 

  Gorm at the tavern. I used area lights to get the lighting I wanted along with subsurface scattering being showcased on Gorm. 

  The Saxons readying themselves for attack.

  Gorm and the saxon. Some extra work on the texturing could be done but it is looking rather nice for the scene. The lighting looks better than I had expected. 

 Playblast of an almost finished animation of Gorm in the Tavern, the first we see of him. Lighting is present but not finalized. 

  Tankard texturing.  Chair texturing. 

current progress on my animation. 

  Textured rocks in Substance Painter. Rocks with lighting. Close-up of detail.

 

  Concept Art Model and Uvs

  Lower body Upper body Head and helmet

 

 

To create the normals and bumpmap for my tree I used mudbox. I used the stencils provided to sculpt the textures of the leaves and bark.  Leaves sculpt in Mudbox Tree and bark sculpt  Final Render

Running animation test.  Lipsync animation test. Gorm improved Turnaround.  Improved animatic which is shorter and with more sounds. My final plan for my the coming final weeks of my project: I intend to complete my characters models, particularly the textures for them before the month is over as well as the environments which I need to create more models for. I hope to start animating before the month is up. Because of the simple influences for my animation I should be able to create the majority of props and environments in an short amount of time, the latter is not overly complex. I'll be able to create turnarounds for both characters and demonstrate Gorms squash and stretch and complex facial animations. I also intend to work on editing the story and content of my animated short such as improving the animatic further, getting new sound work and better voice acting for the short and even some music. My back up plan would be to demonstrate my animation capabilites, creat...