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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:

  • Left and Right Mouth Scream Blendshapes

  • Blend shapes for the mouth, eyelids, eyebrows and linear squash deformers​

  • Grind Teeth Mouth BlendShape

  • Eyebrow Blendshapes

  • Jaw Controller (connected to the jaw through Expression)

  • Eye Lid Controller

  • EyePopping Controller

  • Eye Aim Controller  

  • Y and Z Axis Linear Squash Deformers 

  • Global Controller

  • 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

​

Special Thanks:

Tim McLaughlin

Barbara Klein

Mallory Kohut

The Sassy Tree Group

Patrick Bueno

​

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!

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