UCH Logo Animation 2 - Laurence Roper

                                   

I began working on a second animation for the UCH project, this one was intended to reinforce my knowledge of Cinema 4D as well as experiment with 3D mixed with 2D imagery. I had intended to create a sculptures block that gets chipped at and then breaks to reveal the UCH logo inside. To start this off I modeled the UCH logo using simple low-poly modelling and then placed a cube with a Voronoi Fracture on it over the logo. I then placed a used the collider body and rigid body simulation tags to make the block fall to the ground leaving the logo surrounded by debris.

                                   

This more or less created the effect I wanted but leaving the UCH logo without a simulation tag made the debris fall through the logo which made for an unappealing effect. However when I added the simulation tag it made the debris explode from the logo in reaction to the block being inside the logo. I consulted my tutors and tried to find information online but unfortunately I couldn't find a fix for this and working it out myself would have been too time consuming if not impossible which meant I had to instead try and make it work with what I had.

                                   

I decided allowing the debris to fall through the logo was the least noticeable problem and therefore what I would go with but instead of keeping it as it was I tried modelling and adding in a sculptures trestle to give the block a disconnect from the floor allowing a majority of the debris to fall down below the logo which meant any settling debris had less chance to pass through the logo.
I also shaped the block to be a more organic 'rocky' shape to try and make it feel more interesting and natural. One I had this scene set out I played the animation continually changing the seed of the Voronoi Fracture each time I played it until I found a scenario that looked good to me and interacted a minimal amount with the logo.

                                  

The textures I initially wanted to create would have been realistic, marble block style texture to give off a traditional sculptures vibe. However I used a simple repeating texture overlay to get an idea of how it might look and the block and logo being the same colour made it quite challenging to read and unappealing to look at. The creation of a hyper-realistic texture like this was also something I was unfamiliar with the process for and something I couldn't find any good resources for so I decided to test out some other possibilities. One of these possibilities was the initial logo colour we were given, along with the colour associated with the SCCH campus as UCH is connected to SCCH it felt appropriate to reference them in the colour scheme.
The hard, graphic colour also made for strong imagery and an easy to read logo which was a definite upside to this colour scheme.

                                   

As I was happy with the animation I rendered it in Cinema 4D and proceeded to begin planning out the hand. First off I planned out the motion doing a quick sketch of a hand and placing it in the scene quickly mapping out the movement and any subtle nuances in the motion that might help depict a somewhat realistic motion without requiring too much heavy movement or repainting.
One I had an idea of the movement the hand would make and the timing was acceptable I began to paint the hand in Photoshop, for this I got Glen to pose his hand so I take a photograph giving me a realistic point of reference. I kept this on my phone and only referenced it for the drawing not the painting as I wanted to force myself to invent the lighting from scratch as I intended to try and emulate a colour scheme and lighting scenario that would fit with the 3D environment. (The blue bounce light from the object is an example of this intention). Upon completion of the painting I added it in to the animation in Photoshop and roughly followed my guideline sketches to get an idea of movement, and timing. This was actually really successful, the 3D and 2D elements both interacted in a believable way that I felt made for a really interesting appearance mixing the graphic, clean appearance of the 3D elements and the more rough, imperfect appearance of the 2D elements.


The next consideration after making visuals I was happy with was sound, this was quite challenging. There are very few good sound effects for chiseling or rocks breaking/falling available freely on the internet. however I did eventually find some reasonable quality and well-fitting sound effects. I found that the sounds I sourced for the rocks falling were too short for my animation which initially seemed a bit of a problem but once I placed the first sound effect for the falling rocks it became apparent that the rocks impact would make a different sound hitting the trestle than the floor. This meant it would be most effective to use 2 separate sound effects to emulate a more realistic sound for the falling and scattering rocks which also conveniently meant my sound effects would now fit to the timescale of the animation.


Overall this animation has been really interesting and definitely a journey outside of my usual endeavors. The most useful thing I learned from this project was probably the integration of sound and how imperative it is to really bring an animation together making it feel finished. It is definitely worthwhile to spend that little bit of extra time at the end of a project to finalise the project.
It was also an interesting discovery to find that I could combine 2D and 3D techniques quite efficiently. However I'm unsure if this would be as effective in a more 2D intensive animation as boiling and other similar 2D inconsistencies might break the immersion. 2D painted animation would also be quite hard to achieve if I was animating something more complicated like a walk-cycle and cel-shaded animation may not work so effectively in the 3D environment. This is definitely something I would quite like to look in to in future and explore the possibilities and problems the mixing of 2D and 3D techniques could make.