With both CG characters all modelled, textured, and rigged, it was time to bring life to them in the form of animation.
The first step was to place each character and desired prop into the appropriate scene, along with some additional environmental elements such as the ground. Then the models and cameras were manipulated into key poses, followed by tweaking and additional movements to the mouth and eyes. Finally, the animation is rendered into an EXR image sequence which will then be imported into Adobe After Effects.
One downside is that the toon shader doesn't display the textures in the viewport, so I would have to apply the original lambert materials onto the characters so I can properly see which one is which and to clearly visualize the eyeball gazing.
The video embedded below shows early CG-rendered shots of 06, 07, 09, 13, and 14:
Additionally, I decided to create two versions of the photo blow effect in Shot 10. One was in with a standard page turn effect in Adobe After Effects, and the other was created in Maya, consisting of a flattened cube and a bend handle. Though testing, I determined that the one in After Effects looked too artificial to be convincing, while the Maya one, on the other hand, was capable of naturally manipulating the cube to give the desired effect of how actual paper blows in the wind. The latter will be used in the final cut of the documentary.
Finally, for this blog post, I created two additional 3D models. One was the TV that a 2D Troy will watch Shots 01 and 02. The other is a computer setup consisting of a monitor, textured keyboard, and mouse (the latter two are wireless to save me from tirelessly animating cables) that Troy will use when discovering the fan site in Shot 04.
While the computer setup is cell-shaded, the TV, on the other hand, will utilize the Arnold standard materials as applying the toon shader will not give the desired lighting effects I require for Shots 02 and 03. The TV screen has a light-emitting Arnold material which also displays an image sequence of the 2D wolf animation I'll be creating.
