Coming to the final stages of the rendering and animation process, sound/ music has now also been placed by Tom Will Morris, some sound final placements directed by myself. There are a few areas on the rendering that may need changing and a light noise has been placed to soften the CGI look. I had also placed a vignette on the animation, but it seemed to make it far too dark, so this was removed.
Alongside this, rigging and skinning is underway on the "Pipe-Dwellers".
Music/Sound Folly - Tom Will Morris: https://linktr.ee/TomWillMorris
With all the scene rendered and at a good stage, I decided to place them altogether to get a better idea of timing with the logo and credits. When reviewing this, there are some areas that are a little overblown due to the lighting so I aim to go back an correct these but I am happy with the outcome so far.
Alongside this, I have also done a little colour correcting. Using ambient occlusion renders worked to add depth but have a bad habit of washing out the colours. After watching a few videos on colour grading via Adobe Premiere, I decided to increase the saturation and add a little warmth to the scene by increasing the orange and pink tints. Firstly I was going to add a overall gradient change to the whole video, but as the lighting varies due to the activity in the scene, I decided to colour grade each shot individually.
Having just blue lighting was making it far too cold and as this is meant to be a childs bedroom, adding a little warmth brought a bit of life back into the scene.
Render Layers: Background, Shadow, AO and Main Animation
All the scenes for this animation has now been rendered, the next step is to make any final tweaks to the renders, add some blurring in some scenes via Adobe After Effects and colour balancing. Using render layers has been a huge help though out this process as it has made rendering far quicker. Working a little on the studio logo, some animation was created via After Effects and some sound added.
Once these are all done and the majority of the "Art of" completed, I am going to start rigging the "Pipe-Dwellers" in the hope to create some simple animations or stills.
At present, I have decided to stop the animation with the "Sock-Stealer" hugging the socks. Originally, I had planned to show him with a new jacket made from the socks it has in it's arms. However, this would mean either re-rendering the jacket in already done in multiple scenes with different textures or completely re-designing the aesthetic of the jacket of the skinned model. Sadly, this does mean some wasted time on unneeded animation.
With this in mind, the next step is to start rigging the "Pipe-Dwellers" in hope to have them making a appearance at the end of the animation, allowing the story to continue like the animatic. If not possible, at least to make some rendered poses and turnarounds.
I have also put together some ideas for the end credits, the studio logo and have started placing together the final "Art of" document.
For the Logo, I was debating between: Lost Marbles Studios, Thingamabob Studios and something in relations to creatures as that is what my animation is about. After a little designing and talking to my partner/family, I created the two designs below.
Out of the two, the "Cheeky Monster Studios" is by far my favourite and will I use this one as it is more in relation to my animation. If I get time, I may see about placing a little animation on the logo.
Working back on the animation, I had to think about how I was going to get the "Stealer" to keep the socks in its arms when coming back up from the drawer. After some experimenting, I found the best way was to parent groups holding the socks to a rivet on the forearms whilst placing a bend deformer within the group so to create some movement to the socks. The socks was molded to arms by using nCloth and then duplicating when getting the desired effects.
Currently the socks are not textured, as I am making a small change to the end of my animation due to time, they will be textured to match the fabric of his coat. I am going to have a small scene at the end with the "stealer" wearing its coats.
I have noted a few areas in the renders that can do with a little tweaking. Luckily, all my renders have been conducted via layers and shadow mattes so it won't take long to fix these errors.
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