The Magical Box

OVERVIEW:

An experimental video combining 3D scenes with 2D animations to tell a short story about two kids playing in their home with their imagination.

MY ROLE:

This is an individual project assignment, so I worked on this project myself from project planning to implementation.

INSPIRATIONS & RESEARCH:

> My inspiration: Raining House Play

A kid animation video I watched while I was a child, tells about the time kids can do when the weather is not good for outside activity. It is hard to find the original one online right now but it is a really good animation to show how kids use their imagination on their surroundings.

> Armor researching

To get a better understanding of armor, I go to this website to learn more about the parts of the armor and simplify it for animation-effective design.

> Interior design researching

An unexpected thing to research before I actually started doing the project planning and trying to build the house in Cinema 4D. I realized that it would be hard to consider how the camera and the character movement if I did not finish the interior design first, so I surfed the internet to how at least the basics of the interior design, schedule out the whole house frame, and draw the interior of the part of the house.

PAIN POINTS & CHALLENGES:

There are a lot of challenges in this project:

> 3D Rendering

The time I sent one the 3D rendering was massive at first time. I decided to output a low-quality version as the draft for my animation work and output the final version while I worked on the animation. However, it will make my laptop suffer a lot while two of the applications of Adobe are working.

> Texture Position Changement

Every time after close Cinema 4D, the position of the texture will change. I haven't found a way to make the position of the texture in Cinema 4D static. So I will have to output the scene every time I want to make a little change. To deal with the problem, I will take note when I find an issue that needs to change, then fix the problem together only once a period to control the time waste.

> 2D Shadow

Mimic the shadow of the scene is a challenge sometimes. In the 2D digital drawing, I can set only one light direction and start my drawing. However, in the 3D scene, the lighting direction might change after the object or camera moves. To overcome this challenge, I built a small ball and put it into the scene as the character, so it would be easy to see not only the shadow movement but also to get the character ratio and stable character size.

> Video Speed

Control of the speed of the video is really a pain point for me. Everyone has a different time to read the dialogue, and it makes it difficult to make the decision. Finally, I decided to follow my superior my instructor- who preferred, to keep the current speed. However, I think I can do better, to maybe take more time to smooth the movement of the character, then the whole speed of the video might be better than this one. I still need to learn more about how to make a better animation for sure.