Kicking and Screaming
Fall 2016 Vertical Studio Project
Final Product
Kicking and Screaming is a 10 second animation that was inspired by Looney Tunes animation and made as a collaborative project in Tim McLaughlin's Fall 2016 Vertical Studio class. I came up with the idea, drew the concept art, made several animatics and rigged and animated the soccer ball character.
A Screaming Ball Concept
Kick Out an Idea
Concept Art
The soccer ball's art mimics the art style of Spot from The Good Dinosaur and Looney Tunes. I mainly wanted to focus on making a character rigg with huge exaggerated facial expressions.
Animatics Galore
Nailing the Timing
Animatics
Our team only had 10 seconds to tell a short story, so it was really important to breakdown the comedic timing and animation until we got it right. Above is a playlist of all 5 iterations of the animatics.
Rigging the Ball
Ain't that a Kick in the Face?
Character Rigging
The Rig Consists of:
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Left and Right Mouth Scream Blendshapes
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Blend shapes for the mouth, eyelids, eyebrows and linear squash deformers​
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Grind Teeth Mouth BlendShape
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Eyebrow Blendshapes
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Jaw Controller (connected to the jaw through Expression)
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Eye Lid Controller
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EyePopping Controller
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Eye Aim Controller
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Y and Z Axis Linear Squash Deformers
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Global Controller
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Center Translation and Rotation Controller
The most important tip I can give after working on this project is arranging the Deformation order in the right way will allow a character rig to work correctly.​
Zuri Simpson modeled, textured and surfaced the character model.
I rigged and animated it.
Rough to Final Animation
Giving Emotion to a Loud Soccerball
Animation Playlists
Once I was finally done rigging the character, I worked on the animation for the character. I had several classmates and instructors critique each shot of the animation several times before I determined it was complete. The hardest shot that I worked on was the slow motion scene, because it took a while to nail that the ball's eyes were popping back into his sockets. The eyes are green in this video because our team had a referencing issue with the hyper shades that were solved later when we rendered. Enjoy the creepy animation!
The Ballin' Team!
The Credits
Nicholas Harvey:
Storyboarding, Rigging Lead, Animation, Editing
Zuri Simpson:
Modeling Lead, Texturing, Surfacing, Animation, Lighting, Rendering
Sabrina Yun:
Modeling, Rigging, Animation, Lighting, Rendering
Meena Subramanian:
Modeling, Effects, Lighting, Rendering
Taylor Smith:
Camera Setup, Color Correction, Title Cards
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Special Thanks:
Tim McLaughlin
Barbara Klein
Mallory Kohut
The Sassy Tree Group
Patrick Bueno
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Music:
Ren and Stimpy Production Music
Hit and Run:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHyc9B1aj1I&index=16&list=PL0MqF6fdFJN55kAA0BEHWYKn0YHo9xMG2
This is a student project and is NOT being used for commercial use.
Our project was created using Maya, SpeedTree, Renderman, After Effects and Ableton Live 9!