Final year project Proposal - 'Fenrir's Tale'
- Genevieve Myhan
- Jan 28, 2020
- 10 min read
Updated: Feb 9, 2020
This is my final Proposal for my final year project:
Proposal
For my final year project I want to expand on some of my favorite modules over the past few years; Performance Capture (using the Vicon system and Autodesk software to retarget and create a small cut-scene from motion capture data.), Creature Design (Using Z-brush to develop and texture a unique fantasy creature.) and Journeyman (Working with game design students to create a small game in which I focused on production, animation - for use in Unreal and rigging and skinning character meshes.). I have always enjoyed facial animation, exploring 2D semblance in 3D animation and looking into the evolving technology of the animation industry, so it felt appropriate to combine these elements for my final project.
Using this project I am going to solidify and showcase my understanding of character creation and rigging, looking to challenge myself by creating Fenrir, the Norse wolf God and key figure in the story of Ragnarök. I will be fully sculpting, texturing, UV mapping and rigging the character bust as my first deliverable. Exploring 2D semblance in the creation process to develop my own unique illustrative ‘story book feel’ to the character. My stylistic choices are key to the overarching project theme. To create a short piece of animation in which Fenrir is recounting an excerpt from the story of ragnarok, taken from Neil Gaiman’s retelling in his book Norse Mythology.
Unreal engine and real-time animation has always been at the forefront of the games industry, providing the technology to re-imagine real time animation. Quickly rising in usage in the film industry, I want to better understand unreal in order to gain a skill set that could help me stand out when looking for jobs. This is why I will be focusing on using Unreal throughout the project, aiming (time permitting) to have the animation (or retargeting) playable and adjustable through real time. An example of this workflow can be seen in Blue Zoo’s animated short ‘Ada’, which brings together 2D semblance and real- time rendering through unreal to create a unique and technically interesting piece of work.
Fig1: Blue Zoo - ‘Ada’ being rendered real time in Unreal.📷
I understand that this project will be a large undertaking, which is why this pre-production document will be so important. I will need to manage my time effectively with clearly scalable deliverables and stretch goals. I will expand on these during the objectives and planning section of this document.
Motivation/Rationale
I want to further develop some of the key skills needed to be a technical animator. Which is a career path I have recently been interested in pursuing (this, production or moving into more illustration based work). In technical animation rigging, having a creative approach to problem solving, in engine implementation of animation and motion capture are all key skills I need to have on my showreel. Throughout my time at university I have touched and grasped an understanding of all of these skills during my modules, and now wish to combine them all in the form of this project. Delving into industry standard practices and better understanding what standard I need to be aiming for.
I believe that this project will not only provide the technical challenge to allow creative problem solving but also provide excellent (and relevant) material for my professional showreel. The Unreal engine aspect being something I have only scraped the surface of and am really excited to dive into.
With regards to the stylistic choices of the piece, I want to challenge myself to create a recognisable personal style which combines my illustration (a longstanding hobby and passion) and 3D work. 2D semblance seems the most time efficient way of doing this, and is something that I have always felt drawn to when watching animations. My favorite recent example being The Witness from the netflix series Love Death and Robots, which has a clear art direction, using 2D animation and semblance to compliment character animation and the strong narrative.
Fig 2: Example of my own illustration work📷
I have also always had a love for Norse mythology, and feel that a ‘shakespearean style’ dramatised reading of the tale of ragnarok (From one of the stars of the story himself) would make an engaging short piece. Some of the key extracts I will be using can be seen below. I will also be creating a short script for my chosen actor to read which will give a better sense of character.
“Fenrir, the great wolf, will free himself from his shackles. His mouth will gape: his upper jaw will reach the heavens. The lower jaw will touch the earth. There is nothing he cannot eat, nothing he will not destroy. Flames come from his eyes and nostrils...
...Odin makes straight for Fenrir, the wolf, now grown so huge as to beyond imagining. The all-father grips Gungnir, his spear in his fist.
Thor will see that Odin is heading for the great wolf, and Thor will smile, and whip his goats to greater speed, and he will head straight for the Midgard serpent, his hammer in his iron gauntlet.
...Thor will finally kill the Midgard Serpent, as he has wanted to do for so long.
Thor smashes the great serpent’s brains in with his hammer. He will leap back as the sea snake’s head tumbles onto the battlefield…
Odin will battle Fenrir bravely, but the wolf is more vast and dangerous than anything could possibly be. It is bigger than the moon. Odin thrusts into its mouth with his spear, but one snap of fenrir’s jaws, and the spear is gone. Another bite and a crunch and a swallow and Odin… is gone as well, never to be seen again...”
Objectives
For this project I will be using the MSCoW system to prioritise my work and base my objectives for the project. With ‘must have’ tasks being my main areas of focus and any ‘should haves and bellow being stretch goals.
Must have -
One 3D character (Fenrir), rigged and skinned by myself (Only a bust) with some basic animation potential and research into creating 2D semblance for the character.
Performance capture data shot and retargeted to a mesh (Not necessarily fenrir)
Clear research into Unreal engines real-time renderer.
Should have -
Performance capture data retargeted and motion edited onto Fenrir, with an accompanying breakdown reel showcasing this
Could have -
Further research into how far I can push the style of the piece and how unreal can be used to retarget facial capture data in real time.
Would have -
A final performance piece of fenrir talking, created using unreal and real-time rendering.
Overall my objective is to have a unique showreel piece that can present to employers my range of technical animation skills. As well as an engaging blog to present all of my research and journey throughout the project.
Technical Overview
With these objectives in mind the technical focus of the project will be expanding my current knowledge in:
- Adobe Photoshop
- Zbrush
- Unreal Engine
- VICON Shogun
- Autodesk Maya and MotionBuilder
As well as looking into some new packages and software that I have already identified may be beneficial to my project such as:
- 3D Coat
- Unreal Iclone - Live link
- Faceware
For character modelling I intend to use a combination of Maya and Zbrush, blocking out forms in maya with a low topology model, then bringing the creation into zbrush for high frequency detail. Usually I would use Maya to texture and UV the model but after researching some different pipelines online (particularly prevalent being those of Miki Bencz) I believe that a combination of 3D coat and Adobe Photoshop may be a more suitable for the style I want to recreate.
Rigging, skinning and the integration of blend shapes will be done in Maya.
Any motion capture I have done in previous modules has been with VICON shogun, using a basic pipeline of motion capture data → Shogun cleaning → retargeting to mesh in motionbuilder → keyframe animation and motion editing in maya → export to unreal . Moving into facial capture and real time rendering however the unreal Live link will be extremely important in taking motion capture data straight into unreal. Face ware is an industry standard tool specifically designed for facial capture so will also be important to look into during the project.
Finally any rendering will be done in Unreal engine using the real time renderer.
Research
Research Blog link : https://genevievemyhan.wixsite.com/genevievemyhan3d/blog
Research will play a key role in this project as a lot of the work I am planning on doing are expansions on previous work, meaning the concepts and technology involved are things that I have not yet tried in depth.
During the pre-production stages of the project I have collected a number of sources that prove the workflows and techniques involved are feasible. Work from Miki Bencz and Olof Storm will be highly informative on creating 2D semblance in characters, there youtube and art station platforms providing excellent tutorials on workflow and tips I can use in my project.
My youtube playlist of potential areas of interest can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlc4pfocBmQmY6Spy0DmZdfG-Cjs4WzYX
Miki Bencz has also recently been a part of the Love death and robots short ‘suits’, so is an excellent source in regards to professional practices.
For my research blog I will be documenting all of my progress with small artifacts at the end of each week. This will be hugely important to showcase my works progression. The blog will also be able to show just how many different pieces of software I have looked into and the varying results from each one. For the facial capture side of the project there is definitely going to be a huge amount of trial and error, so by having this all documented incase no final showreel is able to be attained I will still have a potential deliverable. Weekly artifacts will also be able to show what I have learnt and how well I have understood it.
By adding stretch goals to the project I wish to push my understanding even further, opening up my project to take me where the research leads. Potentially presenting and answering questions such as;
Is this process accessible to people outside of industry?
Could this process be simplified or made more efficient?
How could it be applied to other areas of the animation industry?
I have been taking a number of books I know to feature areas of my project out of the library to help with research. The ones I have currently taken out can all be found in the Resources section of this document.
Part of my pre-production has also been to create some mood boards collating research into art style and project ideas, in the form of images. The mood boards allow me to keep my art style on track and will be really helpful later on in solidifying the feel of my character. They can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WZQQ4bEDCQKFhWFh-Sx9CP6wvVPqIkaOaaDW6ujpCMM/edit?usp=sharing
Fig 3: Collection of reference images for 2D semblance in animation.📷
Fig 4: Collection of reference images for Fenrir and the illustrative art style I wish to replicate. The top Left image is a piece of my own previous work almost replicating this style.📷
Ethical Issues
The main ethical issues I could face are the use of actors in the project, copyright infringement and cultural appropriation
When using an actor I need to make sure they are comfortable being filmed on set, with their voice and image playing important roles in showcasing my work. I will need them to fill out a standard actor form specifically detailing that they allow me to use any footage of them that I take, in this project, in showcases, reels and anywhere else it may be appropriate.
For copyright infringement, I will potentially be using an excerpt word for word from Neil Gaiman’s book ‘Norse Mythos’. Under copyright law I should be protected as my use is for educational purposes only and I do not intend to make any kind of profit from the extract. I must be respectful of the author and credit him for the extract.
For potential cultural appropriation, I will be recreating the Norse God Fenrir. Due to creative license my creation could take any form, however I need to remain respectful to the source material and culture from where the story originates.
Project Deliverables
Primary Deliverables -
Fenrir Bust - Rigged, Skinned and Textured. Has a clear feel of the concept artwork, with added blend shapes (Delivered as a Maya Project).
A basic performance piece (Face focus) captured then presented in Unreal. (Unreal project and short .MP4 clip produced)
A weekly research blog, with small artifacts created that show a clear understanding of what has been learnt and achieved that week.
Stretch goals -
Performance piece retargeted to Fenrir head.
Real-time render of animated piece, staying true to the ‘storybook’ narrative, with a strong sense of style.
Project Plan
My full project schedule can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hk8b0JV_r9-aGNg9sw5A7fvRDIIPyq0bueRClje2J-M/edit?usp=sharing
I will be updating this throughout the project, making accommodations for if goals are not met or unforeseen circumstances occur.
According to my project plan the full Character creation section of the project should be completed by 10th March
With the bulk all Stylistic research finished and ready to be implemented by 21st Feb
Alongside the creation of Fenrir will be mostly research meaning the most intensive few weeks of the project will definitely be 17th of Feb to the 9th March. The reason for this intensity is that once fenrir is done I want to be able to quickly move into unreal. As I know less about unreal I have allocated a lot more individual time to it so as to accommodate new learning.
The first technical reel is to be started 30th March and completed before the beginning of the Easter Holidays (April 6th). So that if the stretch goals are not able to be completed I will still have enough to work with for my product hand in.
All rendering and reels must be at least started on by the 13th april to begin the write up process and leave enough time to account for potential unforeseen difficulties.
Any extra undertakings or stretch goals will be worked on during the four week period between 30thMarch and 27thth April due to the lower workload.
With this schedule I believe that I will be able to produce an interesting and professional project by the hand in date of April 1st
References
Books
Gaiman, N. 2017. Norse Mythology. USA: Bloomsbury
Kitagawa, M. and Windsor, B. 2008. MoCap for Artists: Workflow and Techniques for Motion Capture. USA: Elsevier Inc.
Osipa, J. 2010. Stop Staring : Facial Modeling and Animation Done Right. 3rd Edition. Indiana: Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Spencer, S. 2011. ZBrush Character Creation, Advanced Digital Sculpting, 2nd Edition. Indiana: Wiley Publishing, Inc.
Web
Lumsden, B. 2019. Unreal Engine Website. [Online]. [Accessed 30th January 2020]. Available from: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/spotlights/blue-zoo-uses-real-time-technology-to-create-distinctive-animated-short-ada
Bencz, M. 2019. ArtStation. [Online]. [Accessed 23rd January 2020] Available from:
Bencz, M. 2019. ArtStation. [Online]. [Accessed 27th January 2020] Available from:
Bencz, M. 2017. 80Lv. [Online]. [Accessed 29th January 2020] Available from:
Bencz, M. 2018. 80Lv. [Online]. [Accessed 29th January 2020] Available from:
Youtube
Netflix. 2019 LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS | Inside the Animation: The Witness | Netflix [Online]. [Accessed 30th January 20202]. Available from: https://youtu.be/IqhXDb69wl4
Olof Storm. 2019. 2D & 3D Animation Combined. [Online]. [Accessed 16th January 2020] Available from:
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