Final Major Pre-Production: Alpha (Collab) Part 1 [Character Scene]

'Alpha' is a project that I will be co-directing and also working on as head of animation. 'Alpha' planned to be a short film acting as a cinematic game trailer. 

As head of animation, I was responsible for getting an animation team together and sorting out who was going to be responsible for what animation wise.  

The first thing to do was to cut a rough animatic/ previs together so we had the whole short planned out and I could start dividing shots between animators. This took a very long time, as there were many points we wanted to communicate to the audience but we also didnt want to ruin the pace of the shot or make it too long. We aimed for a minute and a half and we managed to get it almost exactly which I am very happy with. 

This is what the final version looks like: 

Luckily, everyone managed to get the shots they wanted or were happy with. Each person on the animation team needed this project for different reasons so I tired to tailor their shots accordingly to what would be most useful for them. If they are happy with what they have to do, hopefully they will enjoy their work much more and produce better work as a result. 

These are the shots that I will be animating. I chose one character and one creature one. I wanted the character one because these scene should have a lot of subtle acting in it and I want to get better at that. Especially because a lot of my other projects are very over the top. 

I chose the creature scene because I would really like to improve my creature acting skills as I have not had the chance to animate many animals. I am also yet to animate an non realistic animal. 

I am happy that these scenes are interesting yet each just contain the one character as I also want to make sure I have enough time to work with the others as head of animation. 

First I worked on the character scene. I did some research into the type of character I think she would be. It helped that I was provided initial character designs by the Director who will also be working as head of the art side.

I explored a few different ideas while still keeping the base movement the same. I wanted to explore different emotions she may be going through during this scene which would impact the subtle ways in which she would perform the action of bending down to look at the claw mark.

In the end i decided with the third as this claw mark is something they have never encountered before and  I think, being the more sensible one of the pair, she would realize the danger and be worried. 

I then went on to develop that idea and this was the result. I think timing is going to be very important in this scene. I want her to pause for a moment before she bends down and also pause throughout to show she in deep thought. 

I am really looking forward to animating this scene as I think its a chance to spend a nice amount of time on a relatively simple scene and also a chance to improve my subtle animation skills.