Riding the high from my EPIC Bootcamp completion and the USA Animation Fellowship gatecrashin, recently I've been wondering what shape the outlet of my new learnings will take... and so, we are trying something new. Might work, it might not work, we'll see.
The challenge = create a bi-weekly short dance film.

[UPDATED: given the recent UEFest announcement about potential 2024 plans.... *ahem* the revised 2023 Q4 mission, should I wish to accept it
(I do), is to see how many narrative & non-narrative animated shorts
I can complete in 3 months...

I only get a point for each COMPLETED film (min runtime = 1min excluding credits). No further revisions allowed to the mission :P

I've been working on a new short - which is to be submitted to a couple of places at the end of the month, so figured I might as well document my process and use this project as the first instalment.

Proposed action plan:

During the EPIC bootcamp I noticed that the animation started to come together more fully in my head once I had nailed the sound for the piece. So, I've popped 'sound' at the start of my project steps.

STEP ONE: CREATE/SOURCE SOUND
STEP TWO: FIND/CREATE ELEMENTS FOR PERFORMANCE/DANCE
STEP THREE: CREATE MOODBOARDS
STEP FOUR: DECIDE ON TECHNOLOGY KEY FEATURES
STEP FIVE: STORYBOARD
STEP SIX: PULL ROUGH VERSION TOGETHER
STEP SEVEN: POLISH
STEP EIGHT: BUST OUT A STANDARD VERSION (& A V360 VERSION?)
STEP NINE: SHARE FINAL OUTPUT (SHARE WIPS ALONG THE WAY)

I was toying with the idea of having this alien gamer controlling the moves of our winged dancer and the abstract dancer.

This set was originally made for the bootcamp animation.
(Controller to be attached to hands)

Gamer WIP

Winged Dancer + Abstract Dancer

Each mp4 would be added to its own TV in the scene. Maybe in the last qtr the dancers and gamer have switched locations (gamer stuck in the screens), dancers roaming freely around the TVs.

I found the sounds of Szegvari and instantly connected with them! Here's a combination of 4 tracks by Szegvari, I was aiming for a runtime of under 5mins. I also love the lens flares from the projected lights in this version of the render.

After looping the track over the last week, I'm now thinking I might cut the gamer scene & focus on 2 elements: the dancer & the griffin (which I discovered in the Fellowship). Thus tech = rigs, animationBPs & mocap (done during DYCP).

Initial testing, I wanted the colours of this scene to be the opposite of the dancer scene, so have opted for midnight blue hues. And ha... okay, so in '02' I might need to tone down the lens flare just a little.

I wanted Griff to mirror the constriction expressed by the winged dancer, so I used an additive track to restrict movement. I like the idea of having them both released in the last quarter... but as I was watching these back, I also thought... a boxing ring could be pretty neat... but maybe I'll save that for another BWS.

Completed: 08.10.23