This was my first time animating in 3D. It was challenging but a lot of fun. The transition from working in 2D to 3D was quite hard but I managed to get the hang of it. It does go through the same process in the production and they use the same principles in terms of animation. I enjoyed 3D modelling a lot. I got the hang of UV texturing after a while and it’s actually really fun to find the right texture to peel out the feel of the character. Rigging was very technical and i found it really challenging. But with practice, I got the hang of it. I learned more about animation after doing 3D animation. I saw how the principles of 2D animation work through the limitations of 3D. I learned how important timing, key poses, inbetweens and secondary movements are.
I chose the chestburster scene from Alien because it is very iconic and it is easy to identify. This gave me a lot of room for ideas to mess around with. At first it was only supposed to be one worm but from Keat’s feedback and suggestions I thought it would be more awesome to have more little worms coming out after the big one. From this idea that Keat suggested, I thought i could make the “mama” worm comfort the little ones. It gives that contrast between a gruesome death and an adorable moment for the worms which works for a comedic twist on the horrific scene from Alien.
I enjoyed blend shapes a lot. I made blend shapes for my face rig and the chocolate blood. I saw how important the face topology and landmarks are on making facial expressions. I modeled the face of my character based on a real face. I practiced making a human head to learn about how to properly make the topology of the face. Of course I modified this for my character.
At first I was planning to just paint my background. But then I decided to build it. It was really fun building an environment despite a short amount of time. I enjoyed building the egg and the goo. Together with the refrigerator, it creates an indexical relationship about eating something out of that egg without showing it but hinting it. Lighting my environment was also really fun. I messed around with different lights to find out which ones would work best. I also messed around with the reflectivity settings for each material to make the environment look more awesome. I also like messing around with different light colours to create a filter to suggest a mood. I also put in a space picture to complete the setting. When I saw what it looked like rendered, I was really happy.
I encountered some problems with my rig after testing it out, some were easy to fix, some were not so much. Even though they limited the extent of the availability of different poses for my character, I did manage to animate my character properly despite these problems. I also animated 6 separate worms. It was really fun making the worms move in different ways as different individuals rather than make them move in a similar way which could have made it look mechanical. At the end, I’m very happy with what I’ve made. I’m looking forward to learn more and improve.
