This week we have an assignment to analyze and prepare for our final essay. I’m considering focusing on animation-related films and games as the subject of my research.
Below is the analysis assignment：
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Week 6: Storyline in UE5
In this term1’s final homework, I would like to create an “fairy” adventure land. But I realise that my personal skill can not support me to complete the totally huge project, so I need to adjust the size and the making level in UE5, especially for the freshman in the fundamentals.
Original Storyline:
A thin mist filled the air. The ground was wet and shiny. Silver fireflies flew over it. They left golden spots that looked like little stars.
Suddenly, the bushes nearby moved. A hand pushed through the leaves. It opened the bushes, and a small sprite appeared. She wore soft pink and blue clothes. Her silver hair was in two pigtails. Her big eyes looked around. Then she stepped out.
She walked on the wet brick path. It reflected the light. There were small puddles and some weeds. Little flowers swayed as she passed.
With every step, the fog grew thicker. She heard strange sounds—like water gurgling and the wind whispering. She felt scared and walked faster, holding her map tightly.
Everything turned dark. Black eyes seemed to move around her. Shadows flew past—but they were only birds.
Then, under a lamp, a scary shadow appeared. She was surprised to see it was just a small rabbit.
But the moonlight lit her way… so she began to run.
Again and again, she pushed through tall grass and trees.
Then the fairy’s view opened up. It was a beautiful moonlit night. Everything sparkled.
STORY BOARD
Character
In this week’s class, I talked to Sarra about my project process, actually, I still feeling confused about my story, including the character. Though the 1-1 feedback talk, I am so appreciat with Sarra, she helps me clarify my storyboard. She said I need to lock on my story, I truly realise my story always changes, and there are so many characters who need to do the animation, it will be quite heavy for the left one month.
For George’s homework weight shift/walk
In this week, we need to use a ball with 2 2-leg rig to show the physics and body moving side by side. When I do the animation, I found that the angle always overrotates until I adjust my action.
When I did the planning, I realized the frame is important, because to be an animator, I never think about the timing and will make the animation “confusing”. The frame should depend on the action speed and others.
The Understanding and Personal Feeling
In the 12 Principles of Animation, anticipation should be more in this moving animation. When the right foot is first time to move up, the body should follow the Principle in this term: K.I.S.S ( KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID) is means to do the simple thing to the highest quality and highest understanding, so that no squash and stretch would be better and natural.
When the weight shift to the middle position, the gravity is in the middle, so no routate and no side， just in symmetrical. Then, next move to the other side ( right feet keep, left feet up and straight), which looks like a triangle and stable. after that animation switch the gavitay and weigh to the right feet, so the body machanic would be in the right side, and show more anticipation.
After this week’s homework, I understand that the important things in this homework is to focus on the hip and legs of the weight shift(or walk), and the variation in speed between poses or frames.
For Ting’s Post to Post animation
First version:
In this post to post animation, the first version can see lots of problem, When I first made this animation, I didn’t use any video reference, I just based it on how my own body moves and what I imagined. Because of that, the timing and the way the feet float looked really unnatural and uncoordinated.
To be honest, while making this first version, I felt really stuck. I didn’t know where to start or how to adjust things—I was just moving controls mechanically, imagining it in my head. That wasn’t a good way to work.
Then I sent it to my friend Chichi for help. She told me the feet looked so weird, like “one foot was stepping while the other was doing a Michael Jackson move.” So I focused on fixing the feet.
Second version:
It looks much better now, but I still feel like something’s weird，I don’t even know how to fix it or why it feels strange.
This is the first time I feel like: I have no idea. My friend couldn’t spot it either, so now I’ll just have to wait for Ting’s feedback.
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Week 4 : Tail fix and Franky’s post123
For George’s homework
In this week of funfermental, I focus more time to fix tail animation and tail’s curve and shape. Definitely I can use my understanding without the tutorial video to fix animation this week.
But when the animation almost finished, the end of the tail still made me confuse. In george’s feedback, end of the tail should be like: straight to “S” curve then to “C” curve. It quite hard to understand even I already had feedback. then I check the <animation survival kit>, I learned how to use “Follow through” in animation.
In my understanding about the end of tail part
I try to understand with the curve how it just happened in this part like: When it land, tail keep the straight shape follow the ball( like P1), and after main body land and release the centre of gravity（like P2), the connect part lands too, but the tip of the tailis still moving, which will follow “the connect tail part” to land (like P3).
For Ting’s homework
This week we use the Franky model the big guy has more strong muscle,s so some time muscles will be rotated and this seems like quite exaggerate and looks like a little bit odd. So that I start to find the problem.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been getting more comfortable with blocking key poses in Maya. But some parts of the body control still confuse me a lot. Taking this bouncing ball pose, for example, the knee actually can’t move or bend on itself. So I have to adjust the controller with foot, even rotate the foot, just to make the knee bend slightly forward and downward.
Some time hand shape is also hard to adjust, expecially the curve. Hand post is necessary to make the hole model looks more like a golden post. So the curve is important, but I still need spend lot of time adjusting then, including finger angle, palmar orientation, every part are connect means when I adjust a part of finger, the other part will be moved, (After few weeks I realized that things is depend on which control rig is followed by the other).
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Week 5: Project concept
In this class, we learned how to use the parent ball set to change the materials inside create the child ball, and more.
At the beginning, I only wanted to make a pure background in UE for homework, but when I talked to sarra, she told me that maybe this is not enough for a simple project, because there should be a character inside the story, so that the story will be more vivid. She asked me to add an actor even if he is in first view mode in the unreal.
Here is my concept about the final homework in this terms. These are inspirational pictures in my imagination.
this is the end of the story in the character view. This is like a fairy land
In this week, we leaned how to change the materials and setting a materials.
In the material map. I leaning about plus 123 and left click with different functions. If you want to change the materials that you need to adjust something, let the PBR ( Physically based rendering) looks better.
Tips of the words:
Base color: adjust the material’s color light spectrum and change parameter. like RGB
Roughness: change the furface of material, soft or rough, even use in road looks like wet.
Metallic: Sometimes it can be used to create building effects, or for objects with metal-like materials, you can increase the relevant parameters.
Sometimes you create the bluemap in materials, you can just drag the texture into bluemap, which will autocreate directly texture sample. and the G matches the Roughness, B matches the Metallic, R corresponds to Ambient Occlusion.
if you don’t want to connect this part, just plus “Alt and click it ” that bluemap will separate.
I just remenber plus 1 and left click will come out a texture sample, and 2,3 will match the difference function of tools.
I believe the animated documentary The Sinking of the Lusitania (Winsor McCay, 1918) was not made for entertainment. Instead, it served as propaganda, using animation to recreate a real maritime disaster that changed history. Its core purpose was strong political messaging.
The film is far from a simple record of the event. It was created during World War I (1914–1918). The sinking of the Lusitania, especially the death of many American civilians, caused great public anger in the United States.
Unlike the artist’s earlier works like Gertie the Dinosaur, this film aimed for a serious and realistic style. McCay used advanced layered acetate cel techniques for that time, drawing about 25,000 frames by hand. This was an astonishing amount of work. He also applied careful depth-of-field effects and multi-layer photography to vividly show the ship being hit by a torpedo, tilting, passengers falling into the water, and finally sinking，the scenes were very powerful. I believe they mean no warning before firing. Like a warning shot, a warning to the ship. (Not saying this is logical in a war zone)，The propaganda is absolutely the most obvious is gets though.
Moreover, text explanations were added throughout the animation to emphasize the truth of the event and specific data (such as the death toll). This strengthened its persuasive power as a “documentary” for propaganda.
This is not just an animation, but also a historical document—a necessary work for us to remember.
For George homework
In this week, I know we should better understanding for Overlapping and S or C curve/shape in animation. expacially in tail’s animation. The most important aspect of this animation is that the tail is moving.
In my personal understanding：
When it jump, the tail should be facing downward. when it touches the highest point, the centre of gravity will slow in the middle, but the tail still follows the power go up then down, looks like “n”, after that tail should be facing upward, because this main body has already drop down, tail should be follow like an “S” shape.
For Ting’s homework
The video below shows the emotion that I put on the muscle model post. It can be easy to see that finger tension is important to show this guilty emotion. The second video shows the blocking of the Jiucybox animation, which was made (rough ver) last week.
Juicybox making is meets many problems. When I first tried to copy them, the main controller just wouldn’t copy over.
That left the body separated from it, which made things really frustrating every time I wanted to adjust something.
I was really worried I wouldn’t be able to finish the assignment where they had to land at the same time. I even thought about remake every frame’s aniamtion. But then our teacher suggested trying to replace the reference instead. So I try deleted the whole juice box animation I’d already done, when my teacher came over and showed me how to copy the animation parameters from each frame and paste them into the new juice box position. That way, I don’t have to remake the whole animation, it felt almost like magic. I’m really, really grateful.
Personal thinking:
Putting myself in this box and doing some unique animation is much harder than I expected. Some problems quite disturb me when I finishing the animation:
First is that jiucybox jumps from the box high, I want add some squeash, make it more caracter and more softer, but after I key that jiucybox some time will stop in the high point and suddenly appear below, it’s means not smooth and not fluency. After that I realised I made a folish the most simple mistake that is I need to set the key post first, then do blocking instead do one to two frame post ! It’s not a good habit in making animation.
In personal understanding, the abstraction in animation is a kind of personality and animation style. It is needs auther’s aesthetic standards that is differenct with other people.
Everyone has their own abstract style( if they want to create), some artist will combine the sounds, lights, and illustrations performence. What impressed me most was the two sclpture stop motion animation in Nigel’s class.
I learned that early optical sound track technology recorded audio through light signals on the edge of film strips, converting sound vibrations into visible waveform patterns. Artists of hand-drawn sound experiments directly painted soundtracks onto film to create experimental sound effects. Meanwhile, the creation of abstract films used lines, geometric shapes, and rhythmic colors to explore the connection between sight and sound.
The short film I want to introduce is called The Little Poet, created by CalArts student Justine King. It won the 2023 Annie Award for Best Student Film. This is an experimental animation that is finely crafted in both its aesthetic and conceptual approach.
The overall mood of the film is dreamlike and carries a touch of melancholy. It tells a story of one-sided love that remains out of reach, with emotions flowing between poetic romance and quiet sadness.
As a student project, time and budget were limited，but that actually sparked creativity. Instead of meticulously recreating every famous painting, the film uses stylization and abstraction. This idea of “brushstroke worlds” turns the medium’s unique traits—the brushstrokes of painting and the lines of animation—into the central theme of the work.
The opening composition emphasizes the confinement of the picture frame. As imagination unfolds, the frame is broken, and the space becomes fluid, irrational, like a surreal scene. When the artist shifts between different art styles, the composition also jumps between a 2D decorative style and a 3D sense of perspective, directly reflecting the visual characteristics of different art movements.
Color acts as a marker of style: the color scheme changes dramatically as the character moves through different paintings—shifting from the soft tones of classical art to the bright palette of Impressionism, then to the high contrast of modern styles. Here, color isn’t just decoration; it’s a core tool for driving the narrative and transitioning between scenes.
Perhaps the connection between love and art is something profoundly pure. Shakespeare, in his sonnets, wished his beloved to live as long as these immortal verses，a tribute to the brilliant stars in the long river of art history, where animation too can shine with the splendor of a May summer.
Van Gogh, David, Seurat, Mondrian… accompanied by the inherent beauty and emotion within masterpieces, a “little poet” narrates a story in tender, slightly nasal rhymes—a tale that crystallizes sincere longing and the true heart of art into a poetic chapter. Or perhaps one could say… art and love together compose the greatest poem ever written by humanity?
No beauty lasts forever without fading or perishing, but as long as humans keep singing its songs, beauty and the memory of beauty，can be passed on.
In this time, we learning how to create a sequencer :First, right click and choose “Level sequence”, and then Find the “skeletal mesh” character, add it inside the perspective world, like this(p3). If you want the character has animation in this sequencer, then just dragging it into the sequencer inside, right click the “+”, if the character has own anmation that you can just use it. and play it.
some time when Serra teaches us, like how to use this tool, it was looks like easy, but when we do the same process by ourselves, that will totally difference, I always came out some problems, like the aniamtion is missing or the outline character option shows a red alert. So I ask Chichi for help, she told me I should first find the character have bone rig, then it can just used in animation. it means that some meshes just no rigs, so they lack skeletal mesh.
The second things is quite hard to learning and understanding for me which is rigs. I also use the character in class.
In the outline, we can see lots of bones connected and child links.
every ball has it own name, and the ranks is difference,taking care of the rank and the ball number. some time this part(like hand) can’t move, that you can try to add a new ball in this part and make sure the “child” part link the right “Father”.
All in all, the rigs part is quite hard to understand and hard to use. But I will keep going and learning it.