Bots and Bananas: Big and Small

This project has been about learning to design, create and animate an object, in this case a robot, but it could be used in many other aspects of animation.

When I first viewed the brief, I found the idea of producing a minute long animation both daunting and exciting. I started by looking at silent films and sketches by people such as Laurel and Hardy, the three Stooges, Norman Wisdom and Charlie Chaplin. I also looked at cartoons like Tom and Jerry and Loony Toons as they are use the type of slapstick comedy that I was trying to get into my work. My initial idea was to have an Indiana Jones style environment. The robot would walk through some caves and come across a swinging pendulum blocking his path, he kept getting knocked back before finally making it through only to find loads more just round the corner. This was going to be my final idea however upon starting to make the environment in 3DS max I found it very difficult and found it was going to be quite difficult to animate in such an enclosed environment. I therefore re-evaluated my idea and decided to change it to a simpler idea of the robot walking down the street, almost treads on a banana skin, jumps over feeling really clever with himself only to have a massive robot come along and tread on him. I realise the idea isn’t as elaborate but I my reasoning was that I would rather have an animation that looks good and works but has a slightly more simple story and environment than something that had a elaborate storyline was going to give me problems to make.

During production I had a few problems that I had to overcome. I will admit that for the first few weeks I didn’t work through the worksheets we had been given in the seminars so it was quite difficult trying to do all this work in a shorter space of time than I should have had but I think that I got to understand how all the aspects of creating a robot works now. I was also struggling with the lighting towards the end. I wanted to try to create a strongly lit environment that looked like daylight but without using the daylight control as I knew this would increase the render time dramatically, I used an omni light to give this effect.

In the end I think this piece of work is acceptable but I think I could do much better. The textures don’t really fit with the models and I should have probably used some simpler textures or used just plain colours instead and lets the models and story show the quality. I do like the storyline and think it has the aspects of slapstick that I was looking for. The models are ok and I think they are perfectly acceptable but again more work could have gone into them. I will fully admit I didn’t put as much time into this as I should have over the whole term. When I realised the time that should have gone into the work it was a bit late. I think that now I have a good understand of the new design techniques that we have learnt this term and how much time and work I should be putting into these projects I think I can move on and produce a much better piece of work for the next project.