A Continuation of My Capstone Project

It's been a tough couple of weeks with college and working this semester, but I have taken some time to begin practice on animating in Source Filmmaker. I've been learning about the different models, particle effects, lighting, and time manipulation during free time between my busy schedule. For an assignment last year in Dr. William's animation class, I opted to use Source Filmmaker to create my animation, and this was the end result after a few hours of experimenting.

It was short, it was simple, and I used a few techniques in posing and lighting that I was happy to figure out and implement. However, for my capstone project, I wish to create something 10x greater than that assignment I roughly put together. I've already got a rough story idea in my head that involves elements inspired by films such as 10 Cloverfield Lane and Ex Machina. I don't want to spoil too much, but I have a feeling this will be fun to animated, especially when it comes to character facial expressions. I'm still reading through the books recommended to me by my advisor in my last post, so the story could still drastically change.  I've began study on pose-to-pose animation in Source, and I've been following tutorial videos like the one linked below to better understand the technique for my end product.

Alongside animation practice, I've been reading scholarly articles on the overall subject of 3D animation. Pat Power's Animated Expressions: Expressive Style in 3D Computer Graphic Narrative Animation contains a lot of interesting viewpoints about the visual styles and semiotics of animated shorts. It also goes in-depth on subjects such as projects with a mix of live-action and CGI, which was an interesting read, but I mostly stuck to the research on animated shorts. I hope that my animation manages to bring emotions out of my audience, rather than thoughts like "this looks pretty meh" or "I think I saw a glitch in the background". The story and characters are my main focus in this short, and I'm going to polish the overall animation so that the audience only pays attention to said story and characters. This is going to be a project I will be putting quite a bit of effort in within the next couple months.