Tuesday 15 December 2015

Production Diary 11 - Alien look-up and blink


This looking-up shot of the Alien really enhances how pathetic and little it is in comparison to the Astronaut that stands tall above. To enhance the vulnerability aspect of the alien (which is the whole humour element) I have animated him looking up at the astronaut with big soppy eyes, as he drags his long arms along the floor. I wanted my alien to not look as clean as the astronaut (afterall he is a rock full of bacteria) so his arms move very jittery and sketchy. His blinking is slow because thats how I envisage the movements of the moonlings, to be slow and laboured, adding sinister value to the aliens to show they are unearthly.


I also tested an un-even blink after he opens his eyes again, enhancing the sinister value.

To make the eyes and hair move so effectively, I created a keyframe on the end frame with his eyes positioned how I want them to end at, and on the first frame I transformed them, I distorted them so it looks as if they are on the front of his face, this created another keyframe, which meant that the eyes moved as if they were moving round something spherical. I applied the same principle to his tuft of hair. However I found that this moved too smooth as it was moving in 24fps as you cant keyframe in twos, and my moonling is meant to be rough-looking. So I copied and pasted all the keyframe frames and placed them into twos so it fitted better.

I asked 4 people their opinions on which blink looked best, all of them said the first smooth blink, it is more aesthetic to look at, one person commented it looks like hes drunk on the 2nd, something I am definitely NOT wanting to reflect. So to get rid of all mixed messages, I will stick with the first.

I then added shade to show spherical movements and eyelids that look particularly mouldy.


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