This video is yet again another example of VR being used as an emotional immersive experience. The fact that there are so many emotional VR experiences shows me that VR is effective as a medium that can conjure all sort of emotive states, which is something I would love to try out myself in my own PPP.
This animation is emotive in more ways than narrative. The visuals convey emotion too. The use of low-light scenes create this dark austere mood, reflective of the dark situation of the young girl. Not only in the lighting but the use of colours themselves are dulled down, even going to greyscale on the scene where she gets hit to pronounce her disorientation.
As the spectator you take the form of the narrator so you can experience her ordeal first handily. Being situated in the perspective of the narrator is an effective approach when dealing with emotional storytelling. It exposes how great a medium VR is for visual storytelling as the immersion makes you feel right in the same shoes as the narrator, subsequently meaning your more emotionally connected to the narrative. Making people connected to your narrative is something I am very passionate about, so the narration aspect of this animation has interested me as I do believe it connects you into the world more.
One of the most effective scenes I feel is the bus scene. The use of shadowing really creates this intense moody feeling, really heightening the emotion. You look around you and see other girls hiding and cowering in fear , you want to do the same but physically can't in the headset, it really plays with your emotion until the point you get slapped, to which I jolted back to miss his hand instinctively, highlighting how immersed I was. At one point your stood in a circle of candles, a euphoric moment, as people show you their photos of their missing loved ones. The candles themselves a motif for loss, this combined with their weary light intensifies the emotion even more.
This brief stood out to me because of its money prizes. I was instantly caught by the £1000 winner prize and how many sections there are of the competition you can win, for example they may award £100 for most humorous etc.
I came up with a really good way to answer this parody brief. However it would take a lot of time and with only a month to produce it I wouldnt have enough time juggling everything else, so I spoke to Craig who I have previously worked with and thought we worked really well together as our strengths in 3D balance well. Craig was up for working on the project and would create the set, lighting and be on compositing duty whereas I would basically animate it.
My idea was a comical one, taking a parody of Secret life of pets and instead parodying it to 'secret life of humans'. A compilation of mini scenes showing what humans do in their secret life when they think no ones watching, like the pets in the film.
The best scenarios to present I found, of what people do in secret, were;
Dancing and singing naked
Pretending to be ill but just skiving to play video games
Eating cake
Browsing the dark web
These 4 scenarios will be played out by 4 different characters, but what characters matched the scenarios?
Young adult
Teenager
Fat woman
Old man
Playing it stereotypical purely for comedic value, which I feel is vital for this sort of animation.
Here are the characters I created by modifying Josh Burtons Morpheus Rig;
EATING CAKE
NAKED SINGER
SKIVING VIDEOGAMER
UP TO NO GOOD ON THE INTERNET
I really enjoyed animating these scenes, I feel I have improved dramatically in my CG character animation skills, and I cant wait till the next project where I will improve even more. Morpheus is a hard rig to animate, to be able to animate using Morpheus after only using CG for not even a year and produce okay character animation I feel is something I should be very proud of. Obviously I am no where near the standard I want to be, I will and want to get better and better at how I bring to life my characters in relation to their narrative. Its the area I have the most interest in pursuing.
I also modelled the little assets in the scenes such as the games controller;
Newspaper, laptop, quilt/towel.
Craig was going to model all the big assets such as sofas, doors and the cake at the end!
I rendered my scenes on transparency's with no background so Craig could effectively composite backgrounds/lights/shadows in AE.
He even created an awesome title for the parody in the style of secret life of pets;
We both have had a lot on with other subjects so I am very happy we were able to do this project together and submit a great piece of work! There were stages where I was worried that It wont be finished in time, with creating just over 1 minute worth of animation in the space of a month I was worried about it not rendering out in time.
Here is the finished piece:
Even watching it back now I see how I can improve in the future. Little movements and techniques I would adjust and make better because even since creating this only a few weeks ago I feel I have learnt so much and progressed even more in my character animation skills. My favorite scene has to be the end towel boy, I feel I have captured some really fluid movement there! If I had more time to work on this I would definitely make a few other movements just as fluid such as the sniffing scene and the walk scenes. I would also pay more attention into the rendering, It could be a lot better, more smooth, but I feel I did the best I could with the knowledge I have and time scales. Craig has done a brilliant job also with his sets, backgrounds etc. We work really great as a team because we both have different strengths that the other doesn't necessarily possess so we fit really well. We also have a very similar vision in general and in the world of animation so it was great working with him again. I cant wait to get developing my character animation skills now even further!
--- EDITTED APRIL 13TH ---
I CAME THIRD!!!!
The animation results came through today and I was through the roof to find out that I had come third place! Out of a hundred to say I only started CG not even a year ago, makes me really happy and shows how much I have come in such a short length of time. I feel I have developed as an animator skills wise and professional wise and I am proud at what I have achieved. To say I have really bad confidence in my ability that is saying a lot! I should start to think more highly of my skills from now on.
