Moon Flower

In a world that humans have long abandoned, a small robot is left to clean the mess they have left behind.

For my final project in my Animations course, I worked in a team of 5 to create a 3D animated film through 12 weeks using Autodesk Maya. The film consists of a robot foraging through a wasteland for signs of life.

Role

Concept & Storyboard Artist
Director
3D Animator
Video Editor

Programs

Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Premiere
Adobe After Affects
Autodesk Maya

Concept art

Initial concept

My team's initial sketches of the characters and landscape.

Character concept

Character concept art for Moon the robot

Initial concept

My team's initial sketches of the characters and landscape.

1/2

Initially, our idea was to have a spirit collecting orbs of light throughout a wasteland, but we changed it to a robot for the thematic value of an artificial life form caring for life. I simplified its design by getting rid of the rockets and incorporated the round head and facial elements from other sketches.

Animated Storyboard

Animated Storyboard that I produced to determine the camera movement, angle, and duration of the film.

I drew a storyboard in order to determine the composition and duration for each scene. The storyboard is combined with a voiceover to summarize the intention of each scene.

Excel spreadsheet of tasks, people, and deadlines.

After creating the stoyboard, we began to work on the final models. I supervised our group's progress by creating deadlines and breaking down tasks that should be done by then.

Production Process

Keyframing and Rendering

I was responsible for animaing the scene where Moon the robot discovers and pets the flower

Water animation

Once I finished my scenes, I helped my teammate figure out how to animate water. I combined the two techniques together so that the water gains a glassy texture as well as figure out how to set a start and end time to prevent unnecessary calculations.

Quality checking

After fixing the chest light, the scene is rendered again without any problems

Keyframing and Rendering

I was responsible for animaing the scene where Moon the robot discovers and pets the flower

1/5

I split the scenes so each member will animate and render a particular scene. The scene I animated was Moon detecting, grasping and then staring astonished at the flower. One of the difficulties I had was that the camera would become jerky at certain points which required adjustments in the keyframes to smooth out.

I also helped members who are having difficulty, such as animating the water coming from the robot's fingers. After receving the renders, I assessed the scenes for any issues and inconsistencies to fix and re-render.

Video and Sound Editing

Editing the video and adding sound in Adobe Premiere

For the final video, I combined the rendered clips, background music and sound effects in Adobe Premiere. This project taught me a lot of valuable editing techniques and working with 3D models in animation. The video was displayed in class and I am very satisfied with how it turned out. If given more time, I would have fixed a small jostle in the camera and smoothed out the many complications during rendering that almost wasn't fixed in time

Finally, I combine the clips together in Premiere, putting transitions and timed background music with sound effects. We showed this video in class and I am very satisfied with how it turned out. There was still a small jostle in the camera that we could have fixed if we were given more time, and many complications while rendering (with problems such as the chest light) that almost didn't get fixed in time.

BACK