Just because it isn’t a robot doesn’t mean it’s not a marketable skill. Animators are the backbone of media production for a lot of organizations, and can offer high-paying and rewarding careers for students.
With this said, The Omegabytes have been participating in the safety animation, how is it going so far?
Amazing, that’s how it’s going! We have been meeting at least once a week on Monday and Thursday, and have been meeting twice a week most weeks.
This is the design lead, Jonas. Our students are learning far faster than I expected, and have been inspired to make and work on their own projects for themselves outside of the classroom. It has made teaching a whole lot easier since students are learning on their own time and I do not have to teach the fundamentals, since they learn those on their own by trying.
The best way to teach by far is for students to work on something that THEY want to do, and to give them a helping hand along the way. Telling them good methods to make certain models, reminding them of shortcut keys, and helping them with new tools while they do the work on their own is the most effective way to teach that I’ve found. It may seem counterintuitive, but the less you command them, the better they perform as they have room to learn and grow on their own without being reliant on their teacher.
What’s this year’s theme, anyway?
We have gone with an old-west theme for our animation to hopefully blend (haha get it) with this year’s theme;
Safety:Full STEAM Ahead!
We plan on having a color palette and animation style that is semi-realistic, that looks nice but is not too detailed. We want to make mostly randomly generated textures with some texture and roughness painting here and there to make models better.
The scenes we have chosen to do will involve;
Several robots moving along a track with different safety measures to demonstrate safety
A robot stand-off between a safe and unsafe robot (safe wins obviously)
A robot running rampant in a saloon-type building to then be assigned safety measures,
A robot being transported on a STEAM train, one that is safely secured and one that is unsecured and suffers damage.
We want to cover a diverse range of safety aspects, and making 4+ high quality scenes in 40 seconds is not easy.
What will it look like?
The style/theme of our animation is very important. Standard color pallets, geometry, libraries of textures, and level of detail for models is important to set early on. We have gone with a theme similar to the popular game Team Fortress 2; it is very important to have consistent quality in the animation, mixing objects with different levels of quality can make the whole animation look bad.
A randomly generated metal texture (made from scratch) the team has all worked with, with tiny grain lines and imperfections placed throughout.
While these textures are not fully realistic, they convey a good level of realism while still being fairly simple, mostly using solid colors with imperfections or layers of randomly generated color. We plan on making textures that convey this level of detail.
Look at these Models!
Our students have been making models for practice for the last (as of writing) 38 days to practice their rigging, animation, material work, and to a lesser extent, lighting. These are some of the models that the students have made as practice for the animation. Many of these may be used either as placeholders or edited/improved significantly for the final animation.
Some train cars and a nice comfy saloon made by different students. These models are to help practice arrays and modeling details and will be improved upon for the final animation.
WIP train to use in our animation!
We plan on making models for practice up until Nov 15th, where we will have 15 days to take the models we have made and improve them, make new models, add materials, and compose our work with lighting and editing.
Materials, Materials, Materials!
We have been making use of online tutorials for learning combined with models made by me, as we only have 1 student teacher. This allows students to work on their own time and at their own pace. Of course, I set hard due dates and usually give students a maximum of 3-6 days to work on the assignments I give them. Examples of assignments I have given are to follow tutorials, create boxes and crates, make pieces of a train, model fences and gates, make buildings, and model furniture. These assignments let students come to class ready to review their work, ask questions, and get help improving their work.
Historically, safety animation submissions use mostly flat materials/textures with a single solid color. Rarely, a grained texture is used with two colors to make a wood or metal texture. We wish to strive above this level and make textures as good as we can, with a consistent level of detail and a diverse set of materials.
Blender Youtuber KennyPhases (https://www.youtube.com/c/kennyphases) has offered us his material libraries for free and has offered to review our work with a professional eye while we are working on it. In the last 15 days of animation he plans on helping us with materials and show us how to make professional, high-quality materials from scratch.
Students were assigned this tutorial as homework to practice their skills
This tutorial, “Making a Mechanical Walking Creature”, is arguably the best tutorial for Blender on Youtube right now, as it teaches animation, modeling, subsurface modeling, materials, lighting, and modifiers. 90% of blender is in this one 40-minute tutorial. Of course, we used the telltale doughnut tutorial as well, but put less focus on it as I personally believe the tutorial is outdated and far too drawn-out to teach effectively. Many people praise the doughnut tutorial as gospel, and while it is timeless and will remain a good-ish tutorial for the entirety of Blender, there are better and more effective tutorials that teach more content in less time.
What now?
For the next week (until the 15th of November) we will be working on honing our skills in the fundamentals, making sure we completely understand modeling and rigging. At day 45 (Nov 15), we will start to compose everything together, solidify our storyboard, and refine our textures.
Now is a time where we could greatly benefit from help from a professional animator to mentor us, even if temporarily. If any other teams know of a professional animator or anyone in a related field that could help us we would greatly appreciate it if you could have them contact us.
See you next post!
-Jonas
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