Space banana
animation
2018/2019
Project Summary
As far as university projects go, this project came with a very open brief. The aim being to create a 30 second to 1 minute animated scene which showed a character interacting with either the items in the scene or another character and showing some form of relationship or personality. After doing some research into similar media and available resources, I decided to create a chase/fight scene. Reflecting back, this probably wasn’t the best form to show personality in the characters. However, I felt it still provided enough action to indicate hints of the relationship between these characters. The characters in question are 2 spacemen working on a space station. As I didn’t have a long time to complete this project, I focused on creating the best work I could. To do this, I evaluated what I could realistically achieve – this meant realism and polished lip sync were out. Building on this, I decided to also focus on areas I’d be interested in experimenting with/improving on; telling a simple story with no dislodge. After all that consideration, I knew I had settled on an idea I was happy with.
Even though the brief only required a single animated character, I decided to push these pieces as far as I could – given the time, equipment, and experience limitations. Being my first time using Maya, I had a steep learning curve to overcome. In doing so, I was able to import resourced royalty-free assets to create an environment with furniture and props. Although importing the models, I still had to texture every aspect and light the scene. Once I had rendered the scene, I realized I had some more time to work on the sound. I originally planned to add music and time the animation to said music, however, the extra time allowed me to add sound effects and ambient sounds.
Overall I’m happy with the outcome of this animation. Looking back, as always, I can see areas I could improve on. From making the animation smoother to sound balancing – I could nitpick my work all day. However, this project left me feeling very satisfied with my work as a whole.