The Making of Bicycle
PRE-PRODUCTION
photos I took at Malaysia and screenshot of my animation
early idea the main character was a female, as the story developed,
I changed the role to a boy. |
Visual Inspiration
Before this project entered the pre-production, I returned to my hometown in Malaysia. Malaysia is a tropical rainforest country where people can easily see jungle, sunshine and rain everywhere. The trip inspired me to make a short that contains a tropical feel; this was where the origin of the general direction of the animation came from. I seized the opportunity during my stay, taking a lot of landscape shots, hoping to put some elements of these into my animation. Story Development
Back in U.K, I began to think of a story for my film, I wanted to do a simple piece that people would find relaxing but with some mixed feeling. So I decided to create a short film that talks about love with someone has feelings about someone but they just cannot get together. By watching the film, I wanted the audiences to have a touch of happiness and also a touch of sadness. On the other hand, I hope this short film was also allows me to develop my ability to produce soundtrack. |
Character Design
The girl character was the first character that I designed, as she was planned to be my story's main character. Orange color is my favorite color and I tried not to use too many color on the character, because I knew that it would be a pain to color the character frame by frame later on in animation.
I tried to make my characters in simple body form, simple hand with no fingers, simple dress, and face features; so I could animate it more efficiently in the animation. ----------------------------------------- For the boy character, I designed him based on the girl's design, they have similar face, big eyes and slim body, just his hair's shorter. I wanted him to look loveable, and 'cute' in a boy way. Originally, I wanted him to have the same wearing color as the girl, but ended up I decided to make him in green T-shirt, which I think had made him looks more appealing. |
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The boy friend design was the hardest, I tried lots of times to get the design looks right, it was hard to make him looks slightly mature then the other boy. I tried not to make him looks weird when put him together with another boy. |
Storyboard
I drew a few panels of storyboard and found that I was too slow in drawing, so I used Maya to build the scenes and the characters in basic 3D forms, It saved me so much times and was very efficient to place the scene, the characters and play with the camera angles.
PRODUCTION
Animation
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Entering the production stage was just like I previously had thought, making this short really was challenging and during the process I constantly encountered bottlenecks. For example, I spent a whole day animating the scene of one of the character riding on a bike and making a turn. Although there were video references for me, I averagely produced only 1 to 2 seconds of animation per day, If lucky I could reach 3 seconds. I began to worry, if it continued this way, this three-minute long animation certainly could be completed within the given deadline.
During the progress preview in the early pitch, a tutor suggested using 3D software to create bicycle in 3D, which could make the process more efficient. Therefore, I began to use MAYA to build 3D models that can be seen in my animation. I built almost everything, including most of the scenes, three characters, bicycle and three fish. After I had completed most of the basic movements in 3D, they had no facial expressions; but this process allowed me to work efficiently in 2D and save more time later on. Sure enough, working on 3D really made my animation process faster and I could almost produce a complete shot of blocking animation per day. |
3D to2D tracing
The next stage after the 3D was the 2D tracing. I imported the 3D works that I had done into Adobe Flash, and then traced the animation into 2D. At the same time, I also modified and refined the animation, as well as adding the facial expressions. This process sometimes was fun, but honestly most of the times, it was very tedious.
At this stage, the activity that I did every day after I woke up and opened my eyes, was non-stop tracing with one shot a day, the whole progress seemed like a snail's speed, but I knew I had no other way, there were no shortcuts; This tracing job lasted for almost a month and I finally completed the whole animation, but only in outlines. I composed the whole Line tests in After Effects and when I watched the finished work, the feeling was: the hard work that I had gone through was worth it, because I had given life to my animation. |
Started to panic!
With the 2D cleanup animation done, the next stage was colouring when I also also encountered obstacles. Firstly, I was clear that the coloring would surely take longer time than outline tracing, as I just had five weeks till the deadline, I really panicked; every night as long as I thought I would run out of time, I was awakened from a bad dream and felt a lot of pressure.
My life had been completely occupied by this animation; apart from daily meals and sleep, my life was all about facing monitor screen holding a Wacom pen, from morning till night. But the one thing worth mentioning is that I went to bed to rest normally and I did not stay up too late, because I was afraid of getting sick, as I did not want to waste a day. |
Take a break~
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In the first week of April, UWE organized a one-day-trip in to Glastonbury and I signed up because I wanted for mental relaxation. That day I put the animation out of my head and I completely relaxed in nature; then my friends and I had a delicious Italian meal. Glastonbury’s scenery and atmosphere were really relaxing.
That evening, when I went back to my hostel and I opened my animation file, I had a completely different feeling, that enthusiasm was back, and I suddenly felt very confident that I would be able to complete the project well; sure enough, I enjoyed my job again, feeling that I would make a beautiful animation (hopefully), and I had motivated myself to continue my task. I found that sometimes people really do need to encourage themselves, and it is important not to forget to take a break when needed. |