MYSTERY BOX - BRIEFING

Today we were properly introduced to our Mystery Box brief. 

The project involves us making a short animation with a predefined CG rig or stop motion armature. We're to consider applying the animation principles to when the character walks onscreen, looks inside of a box, and their reaction. The box cannot be moved or touched, and the audience can't see what's inside it; only the character. It should last between 10 and 15 seconds, and be one fixed shot. We should also consider what's actually in the box, and how the character reacts.

Along with the usual deliverables, we're handing in:

• A storyboard, detailing the sequence
• An animatic
• The Mystery Box sequence itself

Exaggerated physical performance is a vital part of this task. The animation won't have any audio, all the information about the character's emotions & thoughts has to be entirely done through body language. We looked at classic silent performers and how they show a range of performances using only body language.

(Charlie Chaplin in "The Lion's Cage", a film that involves Chaplin only using physical movements and signals to communicate - credit: Charlie Chaplin)

We were given the choice between CGI and Stop Motion for this project. I chose CGI, for various reasons I discuss in both my Maya and Stop Motion workshop blog posts. We would be working in Maya again, and the animation would be a three step process:

1. BLOCKING  - Key poses, held to allow clarity for review
2. ANIMATION - Converting stepped keyframes to spline, and adjust to make a more appealing performance
3. POLISH - Refining movements and adding detailed keyframes

We saw an example of these steps at play with shot progression reels, specifically from Frozen and Kung-Fu Panda 3.

And that was the end of a surprisingly short briefing! I'm really interested to see how this project will go, considering it's the first real CGI animation I'm going to be doing! I have to storyboard some idea for what I could do for this animation, and at the minute I'm not entirely sure what that could involve. I'm sure I'll have something by the time the next session rolls around! There's a performance workshop on Wednesday, where I can start working on more realised ideas!