Embedded Files
Ideation
Ideation
The Script
The Script
The establishing shot is a front view of the group of adventurer Lego men (Arathorn, leader name in development) looking towards the camera with his back to the dungeon door and the party behind him. Arathorn ready’s himself for the unforeseen challenge ahead of them.
“Alright let’s do this” he says confidently
The scene cuts to an orthographic view of the dungeon corridor with Arathorn to the left of screen as they set forward and immediately a trap is sprung and one of the party member’s perishes. He barely escapes but presses onward.
A montage ensues of Arathorn dodging skillfully and possibly with humor through the multiple unique traps. Whilst the rest of the party continually die in each cut.
Finally reaching the end of the corridor alone, he opens the door and walks into the next room. He finds a lone chest in the center of the room, no other obstacles block his path. Cautiously he moves towards his prize. Upon reaching the chest excited to steal the loot inside, the mimic chest suddenly opens up and consumes the screaming Lego man.
It then zooms out to a wizard "master builder" who has created these Lego constructs to play with. Sitting in his wizard room in brooding silence for a moment. Eventually he also acknowledges that he gave the Lego sentience and is now regretting it as he listens to its continued anguished screams.
“I should not have given them sentience….” The wizard reflects to himself.
Created by me
Mood Boards
Mood Boards
This mood board was a huge help in grounding our visual for the Lego Characters
Mood board for the unique traps that will be set off in the dungeon, slaying the members of the party 1 by 1. There were some traps I definitely wanted in the animation, the Gelatinous Cube and arrow dart trap were a couple I was adamant on having.
The aesthetic of the dungeon was something I was more focused on then the exact look of the dungeon. I did have a few parameters for the design of the dungeon which were that it needed to look medieval, gloomy and in some state of disrepair due to ages of neglect. This mood board helped capture those elements well and I suggested Valent the Environment Artist to base his works heavily off these.
Concept Art
Concept Art
Previs in Maya
Previs in Maya
Previs_Sound_Version1.mp4Previs made I made in Maya. I knew how import a previs is to production and so I worked hard on completing this as soon as possible.
Production
Production
Lego Mimic Monster Rig
Lego Mimic Monster Rig
The mimic rig I modelled and textured entirely in Maya. I completed the model for it fairly early on in production, but the tongue rig took over 8 iterations to complete. I used various rig plugins, multiple rigging tutorials and just different aesthetic design changes throughout the production. Only ever finalising it near the end of production.
Consolidating Works
Consolidating Works
All the texture nodes I needed to create and implement into Maya in order to fully texture all 6 Lego characters. A time consuming task and did create in my opinion to many unnecessary nodes. But with how the Lego rig was created there wasn't any way to optimise this process. All the equipment textures I made in Maya myself using AiStandard Shader.
Putting all the textures together took a fair amount of work, but I was super stoked with the results. The Lego Adventurer's looked incredible and all looked they belonged in that world even though multiple people worked on separate elements of their design and production.
Using the assets Valent had poly-modelled, I setup the wizard's table scene. Where the set of the Lego Characters in the dungeon is shown for what it is in the wizards world, a toy set. To really convey the separation of the two worlds I used entirely new textures for the whole dungeon showing that its made of plastic, like a toy. I did accidently have the orientation of the dungeon slightly incorrect, which was only picked up by another student well after renders were complete.
I setup this scene using rendering layers, discovered almost on accident and entirely out of necessity. The wizard I rendered solely with just himself and the lights visible in the scene. I then added the animated 2D background in Premiere Pro in a separate layer behind the wizard render and it worked!
My Animations
My Animations
I animated the final half of the animation and I was pleased with the final result. It was a lot of work getting the Mimic scene to work at all. The rig, the lighting and the render itself were all proving to have some degree of difficulty in performing how I wanted at the time. But after an absolute slog of time and effort I got it finished.
I did also tweak and re-time almost all other animations done by Moses. Some minor polish, other's almost complete overhauls. I added the Wizard hat in every scene and did the secondary animation for it as Moses didn't have the asset till after he had finished animating.
Post-Production
Post-Production
I worked on Post-Production alone. I believe having just myself doing the video/audio editing, sound effects, voice lines and transitions helped towards a more coherent animation. I'm glad I really pushed for our rendering process to begin weeks before the deadline, due to how slow the process was it was good foresight. As it allowed for the render's to be evaluated and redone if mistakes were found, which there were and subsequently fixed. The buffer time for when the renders were complete allowed a decent window of time for me to work on post-production. The final part of animation that can be overlooked at times but I wanted to put some time and focus on as it can really elevate an animations quality. The editing of all the shots together was extensive as we just had so many. I found multiple tracks that flowed with the animation, editing and adjusting timing and audio gains in sections to better fit the animation. The sound effects were all downloaded from Youtube and all needed to be editing in one way or another to fit the animation. Took a lot of work making sure each sound effect hit the right timing and was the correct level of volume.
The Lego DnD Animation
The Lego DnD Animation
Reflection
Reflection
This project to me was a huge success. I'm very pleased with my groups efforts in the production of our animation. Everyone was pulling their weight and producing content at a steady pace. Breanna completed the Lego Character Model along with UV unwrapping it, she finished concept art for all 5 Lego characters and has completed the props used by the Lego dudes. Her work was always high quality and detail. Jackson finished the storyboard, the concept art for the wizard "Master Builder" as well as the character turnaround sheet, the background animation of the wizard room, he created the lego characters textures in substance painter, animated the only spoken line of the lego characters. He worked diligently throughout the whole process, picking up work wherever needed. Moses completed the rig for the Lego Character's within a week and it worked surprisingly well, it did have some issues that I discussed with him and he has agreed to fix. He completed all the animations for the first half of the entire sequence multiple times. Valent finished the modelling, texturing and lighting entire "Lego" environment in an amazing amount of time, whilst it needed some polish and adjustments it was absolute quality work.
For myself I'm proud of the amount of effort I put into the workflow pipeline of this animation. I had oversight on all elements of the animation as Creative Lead and I always made sure I wasn't micromanaging the members unnecessarily. I needed to balance my time between being group leader and my own work needed for the animation. I gave feedback whenever needed and did have the final say in some decisions where group indecision was apparent. In hindsight with the script and storyboard, I did set a high bar for work needed. But I was confident we would be able to finish it if we properly managed our time and resources. For example Valent was spending a lot of time and effort on a single asset, I saw his progress and while it looked promising I asked him that he needed to greatly reduce the time spent on this asset as we needed more quantity of asset's sooner and he can go back to the door asset to polish its design later. A lot of my own works can be scene in the second half of the animation. Whilst I did spend a lot of time consolidating everyone's works into a singular continuously growing Master File. I worked on a Mimic and multiple tongue rigs, animating the vault and wizard organic character scene's.
Work Folders
Work Folders
A Pre and post production pipeline workflow board I created in Milanote.com. I created an asset list, a schedule and set up various boards for showcasing completed works for revision.
Page updated
Report abuse