I start to do the previs from the beginning. Because I cut the soundtrack and I will only do one fight scene. The first shot is the dead body of the wyvern.

The camera moves a little to the right, we can see a sword sticks in its body. And some body pulls it out.

The person puts the sword back to the scabbard slowly. Then camera shows her whole body, it’s a samurai girl.

It seems like there is a fight before, she killed the wyvern by her own. She looks at the dead body and leaves this place. The camera starts zooming out from the top, and we can see the dead body clearly. Also the music start here.

However, there is a other dragon flys form the mountain behind while she is walking.

She feels the dangerous from behind.

The dragon drops to the ground and knocks her away.

The dragon keeps stamping her and she tries to dodge the attack.

She turns back and looks at the enemy-She has the eye contact with the dragon

Then the climax start from here. Like I did before, the dragon blows her away and she tries to slow down the speed and runs to it. But, I made some changes for that, because what I did before was too long and not necessary. Those fire ball attacks just take too much time and didn’t work well. so I just let the girl spins around in the air and drop on the ground, then runs to the dragon.

The dragon aslo attacks her straight away, a big slam.

But the girl still dodges it successfully, and jumps on its backside.

I was think how she can kill a a dragon which is way bigger then her. Seeing as she only had two swords, I think slit the throat might be the most direct way to kill it. So she has to jump on its body and close to its head to attack.

But the dragon rises its head make her slips down. And the long take shot will stop from here.

Next shot is the girl drop on the ground and the camera zoom out, dragon spits the fire to her. I might make some changes on this scene, I might let the dragon flys to the air and spits some fire ball and lands. I will consider about this.

She dodges the fire and runs and jumps on its body. She keeps runninng on its leg and arm while she is attacked by the dragon.

Then she jumps on its head and stab its right eye.

The dragon shakes its head in pain and throws her out.

She stands up annd runs tp the hill behind.

Really to jump attack.

The dragon got mad and runs to her.

In this shot the gril bends her body to the left, because the dragon right eye got stab there is the blind area. She is ready to attack there.

She hits its jaw and then she cuts it all the way down from its neck to stomach.

She jumps out and lands, the dragon falls downn in front of her.

After making this previs, I will start from 00:34 to do the blocking and spline it. I will continue with this project in the future and I will definitely finish it for my final showreel.

While I thinking about the storyboard, I made a change for the soundtrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GBeD6Ukhh0

I was going to make 2 fight scenes for each dragon, because I felt at the 1:00 is the demarcation point of the soundtrack. I can feel the first part is a skirmish. Next starting from 1:00 to 1:20 is a transitional part where tension builds up. Then last part from 1:20 to 2:20 is a boss fight. That’s what I feel about the soundtrack. But now I need to make some changes, because I need to save my time and try to focus onn one main fight scene, so I cut the first part and start from 1:00, diretly to the boss fight after the short prelude. So now the length of the soundtrack is 1 minute and 22 second.

I keep running through the storyline on my mind, try to arrange the fights accoording to the soundtrack. The story is very simple, this samurai girl is a dragon slayer, who kills a wyvern and tries to leave. But there is bigger and angry dragon comes out and stop her way, then they start the fight.

For saving the time, I skip the part of making the storyboard and jump directly to the previs part. When I’m doing my personal work I use to start from the most important part. For this animation I want to make a long take shot to show the fighting. How to desgin this shot will be the most important part.

My idea is to let the dragon roars to her and blows her away, then she runs to it and start the fight.

The dragon stops her way and stares at her.

It stands up.

It roars and blows her away.

There is a stone behind her.

She falls down on the ground.

She turns her body and push the ground.

She pushes herself to the air and tries to use the sowrds to slows her down.

Then she jumps to air and do a backflip.

At the time she drops on the ground, she see a big fire ball flies to her.

She dodges it and runs toward the dragon.

Then she will dodge more fire ball attacks and start the fight. But I stop here, because I think this part are quite long I might need some changes in the future. Also my tutor Alan needs me to show the whole story first otherwise people won’t know what is going on in my animation. Therefore, I will start form the beginning to make a rough previs and try to make the story clear.

In the period of making this part, I have met some problems.

1. The Ik and FK matching.

Because this animation involves a lot of extreme moves like spins, jumps, and backflips, the IF and FK matching are important. But I have found some tools which will be very easy to deal with that. The advanced skelecton has its own matching tool. Michael Cuevas have wrote a IKFK script for every Kiel Figgins’s rig, the samurai girl I bought is from his store. Also there is a tool call ‘Universal IK FK Switch and Match Tool’ which can be using for almost every rig.

2. The gimbal lock.

The gimbal lock in maya can be cause serious problems of the animation. I didn’t notice that before until I making this animation in my FMP. Especially happening a lot on the upper arms, leg and waist, it will cause them to move in a strange arc. It’s easier to see the problems with more extreme moves. I tried to fix that with Euler filter but it doesn’t always work.

So I only have two solutions for that. The first one is make the decision of the rotaion order before doing the animation. For example like XYZ, X controls nothing, Y controls X and Z controls XY. So the axis that you use a lot should be put it in the first order. The axis that you barely use should be in the second order. The second solution is do the keyframes to the rotaion order. You can change it according to the animation but just need to be carefull with the transition.

Link to this part:

I will not struggling with creating my own character anymore, I used to do. Because I need to focus on animating not modeling. So I tried to find some free rigs first.

The first dragon rig I found is this one:

The next one is stone dragon:

The dragons that I chose are in a realistic style, it will look more oppressive in comparison with the cartoon style.

As for the selection of the characters, I have thought about it for a while. It depends on what kind of action that I want to make. My idea of the animation is a man fight with a dragon alone and the dragon will be hundreds of times bigger than this warrior. So I need this character to be agile with great reflexes and sharp attacks.

I think the game ‘Monster Hunter’ could be the great reference of my animation. There are various of weapons to against dragon on the game. I chose some light and agile weapons to watch their attack move and get some ideas.

In this video we can see the long sword has many actions to aviod the attack, it can even jumps or climb on the monster to the high and attack. It just like a Japanese katana but bigger.

The dual blades has the highest agility, it has a Demon mode which can let the character moves very fast than the normal mode. And its Flurry Rush can spin around to close the enemy, aviod attack and even jump on the enemy and attack enemy’s backside.

Then I have looked for some rigs from the online resourse tried to find a best character to macth my ideas.

These thre eare the good characters, they had sowrd or dual blades, and their body all look like the agile type. But they are quite stylised.

Then I found these two samurais. The mechanical samurai are in very good design, but I think this style are not quite fit my animation, it should be in the high technical world in the future. But this samurai girl is perfect, the whole design are amazing. Her body shape is like a normal human body, and the red infected parts can show some relation with the dragon on the fantacy world.

This rig is created by Kiel Figgins and I bought this rig on his website.The modeling, rigging and the textures looks perfect. And she has dual katana and can be desgined some very fast and cool attack move.

The next step is looking for the landscape. I found it very quickly. It’s call The Ghost Town.

It is a flat land with some hills surround, and there are some small houses in the middle. I was thinking the story of a dragon attacks the small town and the samurai fight with it. But then I realised if they fight, all the buildings will be smashed. And simulating the broken buildinngs will be a long process and I cant focus on the animation. Therefore, I removed all the buildings but tried to keep the plants on the ground.

After selecting all the elements I need, the last step is find some references of the dragon animation and the character attack animation.

Nergigante is the most brutal dragon in the game, it has only physical attack. The video below is the attack moves.

Fatalis is the final boss of the game, its attack is firing. Also and see the roaring and flying movement in the video.

My favorite game animation showreel, there are many katana attack scenes in it.

David Vince’s demo reel, including many creature animations.

The last one is the dragon boss fight in God Of War 4, a man fights with a huge dragon. it has the gameplay and the CG scene just like watching a movie.

Finally I found the references that I need, I can start to think about the storyline.

It’s time to continue with my FMP project. The idea came from Attack On Titan. The picture below it’s what I have done so far.

In term3, I made the choice to working on the muscle simulation with Ziva. I also want to learn more about rigging and the hair simulation, then make a short animation and put it into Unreal engine to do the real-time rendering.

However, the whole processes above are not too much about animation. I was really struggling about what kind of FMP should I make and what I am going to do in the future. I like modeling. I really enjoy the feeling of creating your own character from scratch, so I like to spent much time on sculpturing the human body in Zbrush. That is the reason I’m very interest in Ziva muscle simulation. At the same time I really want to learn Unreal engine. Therefore, I decided to do this proect.

However, with the tasks I did over the summer, I gradually changed my mind.

Apart from animation, my personal work is very limited. Therefore, I could only combine the animation works I made during this master year into a showreel, and all the jobs I applied were 3D animator or Previs Artist. In this process, I gradually found that I didn’t have a clear goal for the future. Since I got into 3D software in the last two years, I want to learn everything, but I have never seriously considered what I like, what I should do in the future, what aspects of things are really suitable for me. After finishing some tasks for the companies and talking with my friend and tutor Alan, I gradually got my direction. I decided to focus on 3D animation. I like any form of animation, and my undergraduate study is 2D animation. The reason why I learn 3D animation is that I want to learn more things, but gradually lost my direction in the process of learning various 3D softwares.

I’ve made it clear that I still want to do animation in the next few years. I need to do my job. I need to shift my focus to the animation. Such as facial expressions, body movements, rhythm of action and shot design, etc. I know there are a lot of things I’m not doing well, so I need to improve myself quickly and make changes.

Therefore, I changed my mind of the FMP project. I paused the project ‘Attack On Titan’ and planned on a fighting animation. The reason I want to do a fight scene is I need to prove myself that I can design some smooth fighting actions and that I can work as a game animator. And I need the creature animation to show that I can do more than just biped animation. So my initial idea was some warriors fighting with a ancient creatures, a dragon would be the best choice.

The music usually gives me the inspiration, also is the quick way to start. Espacially the battle scene, you can imagine and arrange the way of fighting following by the rhythm of the music. I always really enjoy this process. For the battle scene, I had to find something exciting. There is a music call ‘KINGDOM-合’ which I listen quite a lot. It’s a soundtrack from an Anime and it was used on the battle between two armies. But I think it will also fit to the fight between a man and a dragon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GBeD6Ukhh0

The part from 0:00-2:20 is the best part of this soundtrack. I will pick this part as the background music of my animation.

I only got two months left for my FMP and thesis. But in fact, 2 minutes and 20 seconds are quite long, I shouldn’t do too long for the animation. I might couldn’t finish it porperly before the deadline. But I wanted to make some big changes, I didn’t want to do just game animation related or just cartoon animation. I need to do some work that can challenge myself, hoping to prove that I am suitable for different animation positions through this work. Therefore, my idea is to focus on making a new showreel to prepare for the future job application, rather than making a small work in the remaining time to deal with the final major project of this semester. So I will spend more time on it after the deadline until it is completed, maybe until February. But I will try to make a proper Previs before deadline, and the prototype of the entire animation will be shown before then.

Therefore, this work contained many aspects that I want to learn and practice for, such as storyboarding,character’s action design, long take shot, creature animation and so on. So I got all my ideas done, now starting to do the pre-production.

The third one was from Bilibili. The first task they gave me is from their action design department.

1. Title:
   Main character: [Arrogant] born superior to others. Therefore, he is proud and arrogant, and likes to order and boss others around.
   Personality: [Tsundere] She has a kind and soft heart, but in order to maintain the image of high above, she will never show them, to cover up with insolent attitude.
   Attack: Spells, no physical weapons
   Body: girl, petite and lovely.
   According to the role information in the table above, design the three actions of standing, running and jumping for the role.
2. Design requirements:
   1) Clarify the design ideas;
   2) Display the design results (in any form, through pictures, action files, reference materials, etc.), combined with some text explanation;
   3) The above output results shall be sorted into design documents, and the above design documents shall be returned within two days.

I have found some reference pictures above according to the attributes of arrogance and arrogance, which are basically some well-known Japanese female characters. There are a lot of common positions, such as one hand or hands akimbo, arm over chest. Run confidently and decisively, with a slightly larger range of action and jump and land in a cool way.

According to the attack mode and posture of the role, I choose a rig that is more consistent with these settings to do the action design:

standing pose:

I designed the standing pose with a more confident posture, with one hand akimbo and a little lift of the head, showing that she was very short but liked to look at people with her nostrils. Shows the feeling of  arrogant. I also made her to smile a little bit scornful; try to design a feeling of pride and dignity, but also cute.

Running:

The main feeling of running is confidence and assertiveness, with the arms swinging a bit more and the toes coming up when the heel hits the ground, which looks more powerful.

Jumping:

The four images are take-off, peak, fall and landing. Be confident in the movements and the facial expressions, and use cool postures.

The picture above is the second task:

• Please design a performance animation (including facial expressions) of the provided characters, which should be no less than 10 seconds.
• The character is timid and cowardly.
• Complete the task within 7 days.

I have looked for some cowardly characters. Zenitsu from Demon Slayer really impressed me. I quite like when he is walking in a dark house and scaring of the demons. I could’t find the clips from the Youtube but I found the Zenitsu’s screaming moments.

The performance I designed, is the character walking sneaky because he was afraid of his surroundings. Suddenly there was a sound behind him. He turned slowly but jumped in fright and fell to the ground, unable to move.

The next task is from Cococartoon.

• Test contents:

Complete animation test requirements with the given RIG:

• Build the camera by yourself (need to show the whole body or half body of the character);
• Please make animation with a good design according to the audio (Try to use the principles of American animation to process into oriental character’s performance);
• Provide reference videos or clips of reference film materials to show as much of your creative process as possible.
• Arrange your time to complete the task around 4 days.

The rig they provided is a raccoon,and they also gave me a soundtrack to work with

Soundtrack translation:

Hey, eh… I came down to earth on behalf of Kunlun Mountains, eh.. Also need to pay attention to the appearance, right? Hey? ! How did you turn into a crane?

First of all, I have analyzed his voice of tone. It’s can be sure he was in a very nervous situation, he could not even said a sentence with confidence and fluency. So what he said about the ‘came down to earth on behalf of Kunlun Mountains’ must be a lie.

Therefore, I had a rough idea of what the scene would look like: A poorly dressed man stood in front of the raccoon and asked him where he had come from. The guilty raccoon lied that he was an immortal from the Kunlun Mountains and told the man in front of him to pay attention to his appearance. But the man in front of him suddenly turned into a crane, and he was surprised. Then he knew, this person in front of him is the immortal.

His eyes look to elsewhere while he starts lying.

Keep talking without looking to the person in front of him.

Once he see the person become a cane, he got very astounded. He jumps back and the hat jumps high. I stretch his head a bit, also made his eyes and mouth bigger but not too far. Because I had to design his expressions and movements in a more Chinese way according to the requirement. Because comparing to western people, chinese people are relatively introverted, so this characteristic will affect to their movement and facial expression.

The job that I applied are 3D animatior or Action guidance. I received some task requests gradually. The first task is from the gaming department of Byte Dance.

The task content

• Basic animation:

1. In line with the character of the in-situ walk cycle animation.

2. In line with the character of the in-situ running animation.

• Attack animation:

1. Make an attack animation, 1 to 3 combos, free to play with it.

2. Attack animation is to test your basic abilities, do a good job in the role of buffer preparation, and the performance of the weight.

3, can be selectively add some lens design and character performance, but does not affect performance animation base such as buffer as a precondition. Basic animation you can choose one of them to complete, attack animation must be completed.

• Requirements:

1, Japanese Anime style, exaggerated pose, clear contrast in the rhythm of the actions. and Be careful with some basic performance like action preparing, buffering, sense of power. But the overall animation shouldn’t be dilatory but fast and clear.

2, You can do camera animation, but the details of the animation need to seen clearly.

3, Pay attention to character shaping, create the actions according to the characteristics of the character.

Start animating:

They ask me to complete the task within 7 days. The rig they provided is an Anime style character. Because of the time limit, I chose to do the walking and attack animation.

The character’s eyes look very crafty. Pointy nose, pointed chin and wicked smile, very typical villain. But his overall look is bit weak, not particularly strong. I looked at his hair, clothes and shoes and thought he was kind of cute, not a serious villain, but a funny character. So the way he walks should be confident and arrogant, with a certain sense of humor just like the scenes of Peter Parker walking on the street in Spider man3. (0:53-2:25)

In this way of walking, the body will move more and the shoulders and arms will sway more exaggeratively. It shows a sense of arrogance.

The next is his attacking animation. It seems like the his claws are the only weapon of this character. So I just play around his arms and hands, making his hands bigger and arms longer when he attacks. I thnik these will make the attack looks more dramatic annd powerful. At the same time, I also paid attention to the preparation of the attack and the finishing action after the attack.

The students will have a chance to apply the Campus Recruitment in their graduate year if they want to have a job in China. But the Chinese companies usually hire students on-campus in Autumn, it’s conflicting with my graduate time in UK, I probably should be focusing on my FMP and thesis. However, after some reflection, I decided to take part in China’s Campus Recruitment. After all it’s the last year to find a job in China before I graduate, I really want to give it a try.

1. Because I have met some problems when I was doing the walk cycle in the Cthulhu project, so I decided to make a proper walk and run cycle first. Very careful with the feet controller and make sure the knees don’t shake. Paying more attention on the follow-through and overlapping action like the hair and arms. Also I haven’t done many running animations before, so I found some pictures as references.

walk cycle:

Run cycle:

2. During the preparation of the showreel, I also received a freelance job from a film company. They said they need to make face capture for their Si-fi TV series. I very interested and said yes, so they gave me a 10 second source video and character face rig.

The software I used is Faceware, it is a great face capture software and easy to use. First I import the video intto the Faceware Analyzer, to locate the eyes, eyebrow, nose and mouth. Then start tracking, and export the file of the tracking data.

Then import the file into Faceware Retargeter. Follow the instruction to set up the 44 facial movements, give it the data of the extreme movements of each sense. Finally I can add at lease three key poses and start the auto capture. The more key poses I chose, the more accurate face capture I can get.

But this test didn’t pass eventually, I will use this as a part of my showreel even though it is not much relative to the animation.

3. I also finished my performance animation from last term, because I have only done the blocking in term3. All I do just spline the animation from blocking. Personally I don’t want to make the facial expression and body movements too exaggerative. I just keep the action in a moderate move just like the way I act.

4. I have done a character modeling in term2, and started to make a simple display animation for it. I wanted to put it in my showreel as well, so I decided to continue with it.

The main weapon of this character is his transformable mechanical arm. Therefore, I made a shot showing the arm transforming then show around his body when he is attacking. For making a sense of humor like ‘I’m just kidding’, the character suddenly stops his action and starts laughing, then stands up, closes his arm and finished the action.

As for his laughing, I can’t find any tutorials for the laughing, so I looked for the laughing scenes from animated films and games, even I do the laughing myself. And I have found some rules of the laughing. The character makes the laughing voice, his chest and neck will bend little bit forward when he starts open his mouth, then back to the original position and repeat. All the actions is very quick and small. I also noticed that the shoulders of the characters didn’t move too much, whether they were laughing secretly or heartily. Most of the shoulder movement was carried by the chest.

In order to make it looks more better, I spent quite a lot time on adjusting the lights and textures, and render it on the render farm. However, the colour display of my monitor is very bad, always feels too bright whatever how I adjusted the colour mode. So the color of the animation looks darker on the other devices. Aslo, as I applying for the 3D animation job, I should have spent more time on redesigning the action and add some short fighting scenes insid instead of focusing on the lights and textures.

But time is short, I need to get my showreel ready before the September, so I came up with my initial showreel here: