Pocket Fantasy, this final major solo project has been through a long journey since its previs was planned out in March this year. From the beginning of June to the middle of November, I have used about 5 or 6 months to complete the character concepts, modelling, rigging, and animating with the environment, also properly built by me, and a render in Unreal Engine 5. Before starting to point out what I have learnt or what has challenged me from its process, I generally feel proud of the final version shown below. And I think it’s a very effective romantic comedy with black humour inside, which could successfully bring entertainment to my audiences.
The story, Pocket Fantasy, from its storyboard idea, I never thought it could go this far:
The archetype of the male character in this project is from the gentleman I dated in London, over the winter, the weather was cold, and he put my hand into his pocket, which I then noticed he had brought things (including his underwear) with him to stay overnight in my place. I tried to drag it out near the bankside; however, he protected it well while he felt extremely embarrassed, hence I started adding this fun into building up my pitching idea.
Although my inspiration was happening in the winter, due to the re-writing of the story (also inspired by George), I aim to create a more light-hearted scene, hence I reconstructed everything in the spring.
Where the cartoonish style/ Lookdev has been heavily inspired by The Studio Wrong, the Pokémon game series, and the colour has been inspired by The Grand Budapest Hotel. Where the latter uses colours within different brightness, but the saturation is in order of: low-saturation> medium-low saturation> medium-high saturation> high-saturation. Another reason for me to pick up this style is to save my time by giving a shape to the assets, but concentrating more on the animation.
Talking about my characters Jill and Dex, the blocking of their concept has matched the proportion of rigs I used in the previs (Which I attached below). And they also helped me to structure the sculpture of their models in 3D.
For the pipeline of their models, I started by using ZBrush to structure their body shape, their clothes and hair, and facial features. After they reach a specific level, I would use Z-Remesh to control the face count of their clothes and generate their UVs based on their polygroups. For their body, I exported their models after decimation into Maya and then hand-retopologized them.
Below is the retopology tutorial I generally followed while progressing through the process. I followed it step by step, and it helped me to understand the principles of how vertices, triangles and quadrangles work between subdivisions.
In the rigging process after their retopology, I have followed the tutorials below:
However, due to issues that could happen from nowhere, I have used different versions of Advanced Skeletons at the same time to test out a successful rig. As I realised Jill’s elbow was slightly shorter, I have adjusted its scale X to make it longer for the rig, and locked it for my animation.
After I finished all my character models & rigs, the environments shown above, I started the most important part, which is the animation. As I have finished the previs of the story since March, in the summer I started with shooting the reference by calling my friends in Elephant & Castle. The video below shows how reference helps me to take notes for blockings and further doing any adjustments.
And after the summer, in the autumn term, I was concentrating on fixing camera and character poses each week to complete the task as mentioned in previous blogs:
As there are too many things to show, I would like to share the link to my syncsketch here: https://syncsketch.com/sketch/Z5LDLFLKY5yR/?offlineMode=1#/39207576/40857159/f_0
Eventually, after I finished blocking the animation, I started testing out the render in the Unreal Engine 5 just to save my time. Based on the advice given by our technician Shihong, I have split all my shots into individual shots, which is more beneficial for me to concentrate on details and make adjustments as the camera is set done.
Here is my favourite sheet created for this project, is to note done the content and the frame number of each shot:
Here are my levels of the project in Unreal Engine 5, which you can tell each shot has been managed properly, and if anything changed, I would just re-import the animation again.
Considering the lighting of each scene, I have mainly used the three-point lighting as mentioned in the previous blog and kept the same scene constant from the beginning to the end. I have made the lighting breakdown sheet during the process, just to make myself clear with the content. Whenever my characters turn their body, I animated the lighting at the same time just to make sure they have been positioned in the right location.
Due to this short animation has its potential to submit for film festivals, so I have asked the composer on Fiverr to create a copyrighted soundtrack for the background music. And I have gathered all the necessary sound effects from ‘Free Sound Effects Downloads | SFX (Sound FX) | Zapsplat‘ as shown in my previous blogs. Eventually, I think the music brings a better effect to entertain audiences, and emphasises more on the movements of my characters, or their emotional flow, till the last point.
In the last week, I have also done the poster for this animation project, and I can’t wait for the exhibition happening soon.
To discuss the challenges I encountered in this project, I realised that although the concept had a humorous structure, balancing the humour without making it purely silly was difficult at first. It was also challenging for me to persuade people to understand a seemingly “gross” or unusual story before the visuals were fully developed. I went through many moments of self-doubt about the topic, but things gradually came together—thanks to friends who listened to me, encouraged me, and to my own skills that continued to grow day by day, all the way to the finish line.
Also, for the final presentation, here are my slides: