E4 Rolling Pin Ident

Planning, Sketching & Modelling

Early planning consisted of concepting a personification of an object to use as a character, then research was done into real E4 idents. A storyline was devised about a rolling pin that flattened dough, felt guilty about it, found themselves in a dimension of judgement, and was accepted by a gavel character for just doing its job and helping the dough become a cake. Following this, rough sketches were created for what each scene should be like, storyboarded with time as a consideration. The necessary environments and characters were then modelled in Blender. I used a large amount of special effects like HDRI and emission to lessen the workload of creating a visually pleasing environment, as well as lighting to add interest to reflective surfaces.

Animation

Most animation in the scene is relatively simple; camera motions as practiced in the cardboard box animation, and simple rotation for the gavel character. A shape key was used to squish the dough in the kitchen, and a simple rig was created for the rolling pin to be able to rotate as it rolled along, with its eyes parented to prevent them rolling too. Speaking of the eyes, this was done using a simple set of textures on one UV, and animating without interpolation between which expression was in-frame. The intensity of a blue light was also animated to create the blue glow when the gavel accepts the rolling pin.

After initially animating, the offline edit was now complete, which was given feedback such as having overly rapid snappy editing, dark lighting, and confusion over having two blue staircases. This feedback was acted on with lighting adjustments, altered cinematography and timing, and changing the first staircase to be grey instead of dark blue. Post-processing effects and audio were then added afterwards for the final ident.