Stop Motion Animation
Client
Educational
Year
2024
This was a personal project I started with the goal of creating a 3D piece that replicated the look and feel of traditional stop-motion animation.
Cinema 4D was my program of choice for modelling and animation, I gained a lot of experience using their Redshift rendering system to create fast, high-quality renders. I used great resources from Greyscale Gorilla’s Plus library to texture and light the scene accurately. This project taught me a lot about project scope and scope creep, I had to problem-solve and find ways to scale the project down while still keeping the core pieces of the project present.
I’m super proud of the final piece and can’t wait to do more in Cinema 4D!
Process
Storyboard
I started this project with a rough storyline and three main goals.
Grow my skill and comfort in Cinema 4D
Increase my knowledge in texturing and animation
Replicate traditional stop-motion animation
This initial storyboard was very ambitious and involved a claymation character waiting for the train. Upon its arrival, he is too slow to get on and is left without a seat. When he tries to hop on the train the doors close on him and, because he is made of clay, he squishes into two separate pieces.
I ended up making the project a lot shorter, as the original idea involved creating and rigging multiple characters as well as animating the dynamic “squish.”
Modelling
I worked on the character and environment models together in order to save time.
While modelling the train's interior, I realized the scope of my project was too large for the timeline I had given myself. I needed to scale back the project and settled on one interior model of the train and a single character.
Scaling the project back was necessary to meet my deadline. It also allowed me to focus on specifics and create a more polished final project!
Texturing & Lighting
This was my favourite part of the project. Lighting and texturing made it come to life as the detailed material textures from Greyscale Gorilla looked gorgeous.
Making the interior look like it was modelled on a mini scale, with graph paper and rough crayon-coloured seats, was like a reward after UV unwrapping my geometry and setting up the studio lighting.
