Short Film

Feast Analysis:

An animated short film I admire is Pixar's production of Feast. 

Feast is a romantic comedy that expresses a well told story about man's best friend. This anecdote gives an inside look on how Winston, the dog, reacts when his owner starts to date.

In this story, the protagonist, Winston, is introduced to a new life style after his owner takes him in off the streets. It wasn't a challenge for Winston to adapt because of his deep love a food. As time goes by, Winston and his owner's bond grew. Later in the story a woman gets introduced, causing Winston's life to go sideways. It wasn't until one day when Winston realized life wasn't about food, it was abut making his owner happy. 

The Feast is an example of how caring and helping your friends and family is more important then objects or even food...

How was Feast made?

This animated short is a 3D hand-drawn/ computer-animated film. Animators used the Meander System to create this short film. It was the first film to use this program in color. The texture, also, was used to create an illusion that made the finished product look as if it were 2D. 

As you watch the video, you will find that most of their shots were the same. This is an artistic technique used to show quick cuts of each shots. In fact, animator Patrick Osborne, said that the story of Feast was based off of the app 1secondeveryday. This app allows users to create 1 second videos and mash them together, making a story. Osborne used this app to create a video of the dinner he ate. This gave him the thought of making a nice short film based off the app.

I also noticed in the film that the people are blurred out. The only thing in-focus is the dog and his food. This is to keep the story's target on it's main character. After all it is a story about a family coming together through the perspective of a Winston and his meals.

I really enjoyed this short film because it shows a lovable dog who witnesses his owner finding true love. He realized that he loved his owner more than his food.
I loved how they edited this story with the repeating short. I think it was really original and different compared to other shorts. It gives a different look on how to capture the story. I can only hope  to be this unique.

Fish

It all starts with a doodle…

My goal of my animation was to create a 3D swimming fish on the Maya Program.   

I had to start out simple. I made sure to draw a fish that had little plain features. After sketching out my fish I scanned it onto the computer and pulled it into the Maya Software. It was there that I began to shape out my fish. I started out with a cube and began to move the vertexs causing the figure to stretch out. I had to use tools that allowed me to extrude my shape, creating the parts of the body such as the lips, fins and tail. I cut my fish inhale with the slicer and used the symmetry tool to create two equal sides of the fish. I screen shouted a picture of the shape of my fish after completing it and dragged the picture in Photoshop because the next stage was coloring.

I wanted my fish to have contrasting colors, so I used the colors blue and yellow. There is also a hint of orange. I felt accomplished with my design I created. I feel that it is unique and resembles what looks like a real fish. You have to save your design as a png in order to wrap the design on the subject.

In Maya, you must add a phong texture and download your file with the design onto the fish. I had to make sure the design lined up with the body, otherwise, the finished project wouldn't come out right.

After attaching the textured design, you had to create eyes for your fish. What I did was take two spheres and put them where the indented sphere shape was on my fish.

The next step was a little tricky. I learned how to create bones for my sea creature. In Maya, the bones are joints and allow you to move your subject more effishiantly (You see what I did there?). All the bones should be connected and lead back to the main bone that will be used to move the entire body.

After lining up on the bones you your fish the next step is to color the bones. To color the bones you had to color the parts you wanted to move white for each bone, the other parts should have remained black. This sounds easy, however, it was very challenging for me. It is difficult because the white paint puts weights on the bone, if you put too much white on one bone then it could all concave on each other because it's too heavy. I know this from experience…

After I finished painting the bone, it was then time to make my fish swim. I used key points to plot where my fish would move too and what angle its tail would be "wagging" to.

My project came together pretty well. I wouldn't change a thing except maybe being more careful with the bones. I know that now. The process of making this animation was a great review for me and also taught me new technics. I can't wait to see what I will be creating next(: