Production

The director's vision was influenced by shows such as "His Dark Materials"

Work Schedules

With lockdown restrictions easing across the UK, it meant that some of our group members had to go back to work. We set up a work schedule with the hours each of those members would be unavailable during the day. It allowed us to shift some responsibilities to other members who were available and able to take on the load. 

A rendered frame from Amy's desk.

Production: Layout

As Miriam was in charge of the 3D layout, she was responsible for finding the environment for our characters in Maya. She found snowy landscapes that would be the perfect background for our scenes and best resembled the storyboards. Nicole being the production designer, meant she was in charge of creating the assets for the scenes and ensuring that the environment was accurate to Northern Canadian standards. Harrison, the CG supervisor, was also looking for environments that we could use for a possible Unreal Engine pipeline. 

Maya 3D Environments created by Miriam Di Benedetto

Animation Tests

Harrison, our CG supervisor made test animations and exported them into Unreal Engine to see if it was possible to achieve. Unfortunately, we didn’t end up going through the Unreal pipeline as only a few of us were somewhat familiar with the software. Josiah tested out the rigs capability by posing the characters facial expressions and seeing how far he could take it. Simone also tested the rig out and created a general walk cycle that could be implemented by the team. Miriam tested out VFX in Unreal to see how we could simulate fire and snow for the scenes that required so. 

Expression tests on the "Penelope" rig by Harrison Bell

Render Tests

To make sure we knew how our final outcome would look, we came up with a series of render tests. Shessy was the head of lighting so she tested out a variety of test lighting renders. She would show this to the team and our director Shenaaz to see which one suited the mood of each scene and made sure that the scene was well lit. Nicole also did some render tests, she made sure important shots were compositioned well.

Lighting render tests by Shessy Idowu

Animating

Each member of the team was responsible for animating different shots for our trailer. We needed to bring the original storyboards to life and stay true to the story. We received feedback from each other and during our dailies from our tutors so we could continue to improve our shots and our skills in general. As we had quite a few shots to render, we took on the help of animators Derek Fead and Brandon Barwise to help animate some shots. 

Stages from one of our Scene 3 shots:

3D Layout

Blocking/ Spline Animation w/ environment

Rough Animation render test with textures and lighting pass.

Final Animation Render with additional lighting and environment.

Editing

Cameron was our editor so he was in charge of the overall cut of the trailer. His role was to put daily edits together of updated shots that we had done. He also made sure that our trailer was edited like our original animatic or matched it as close as possible. He also found sound effects that would best match the scene and bring life to it so it would not be bland. Shenaaz was also able to put a mix together of a backing track and traditional chant that fits perfectly with our trailer.

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