Month: March 2025

Animation background:

In my FMP, I plan to create a chase animation set in a cyberpunk city. The story takes place after Earth’s environment has been destroyed, and humanity is forced to live in limited-space, mobile cities. Due to frequent disasters, the cities move to different locations. To make transportation easier, the cities are designed in the shape of containers with buildings on the top and bottom to save space.

In a world with limited resources and a deteriorating environment on Earth, multinational corporations set their sights on interstellar immigration. With their propaganda, some wealthy individuals have already moved to other planets, but labor is needed to support the workforce and colonization efforts. The protagonist, an ordinary person, signed an unequal contract with the corporation, which secretly replaced her original body with a mechanical one. Now, her appearance is a projection based on preferences and DNA calculations, and her true body is fully robotic.

After an unexpected program glitch, she was cut off from the company’s monitoring system. She reached out to the colonized aliens and struck a deal: If she could infiltrate the company’s headquarters on Earth and steal a gene ball containing the DNA of original creatures, the aliens would rebuild her real body. Once she obtains the gene ball, she escapes the city, regains her body, and joins the aliens and other workers to fight back against the company’s exploitation.

However, my animation project will only focus on the segment where she escapes the city due to time limits.

Previs Shot:

Storyboard：

In this shot, I tried to increase the viewer’s sense of immersion by having the character as close to the camera as Ekko is. She spins around in front of the camera and the fly machine is very close to the camera. But in fact, the character’s actions lacked logic, as if she was acting knowing the camera’s point of view.

Also because of the need to get to the camera for the flying machine, the character’s lower body had to be very close to the camera, which makes the scene a little awkward. And because it’s too close to the camera, a few frames get blocked. But the main problem is still that one of her spinning behaviours in front of the camera looks rather strange.

So George suggest me can shot in the begging when the character face to the camera, so she will not turn around, just follow the motion trail looks like below:

Also, there are speed issues. For example, when the police car and the character are about to collide, both sides slow down. George suggested that I could keep the police car from slowing down and make everything happen fast. I plan to adjust the speed this week.

So I adjust it like this:

I tried to make the character perform a spiral rotation. I adjusted some keyframes and curves, removing unnecessary keyframes so that the overall animation looks smoother than before.

Moreover, George suggested that I modify the design of the flying machine to be in the shape of a skateboard with some larger planes. That way the character’s lower body can come sideways without having to keep moving horizontally all the time. When the lower body is always facing forward but the upper body is turned sideways, the movement can be a little strange.

The third problem is that the character decelerates for a while after getting out of the way of the police car, and then doesn’t continue to fly in the same spiral direction as before. So I need to get to the bottom of this.

The difficulty with this problem is that the camera is moving at the same time to avoid the character being too small a proportion of the screen. However, when the character and the camera are moving at the same time, cranking out the proper motion trail in normal view doesn’t make the character’s position in the current camera correct. This is because both sides are making coordinate changes. I think I’ll spend some time on this part to make it look normal in camera view.

Also, the speed problem still exits. Before I followed the fast-slow-fast principle, which was simpler and rougher to deal with. After George wrote the notes for me, everything became intuitive. The changes in speed are not averaged over a whole shot, but are based on the character’s trajectory.

So, I adjust this shot:

In this week, I change some of the order of the shots, and delete the close up shot for character’s eye. I feel the story looks more smooth and connect after I change it. Cause some of the shot gives audience anticipation to what the character will do and why she do this next. That makes the whole action more logic.

I also drew the character design for the protagonist and the concept art for the flying robot.

She is an ordinary person who has signed an unfair contract with a large corporation and is forced to participate in alien colonization. The company stripped her of her body and transformed her into a fully mechanical prosthetic to work in extreme conditions.

So her current appearance is actually a projection, which is why she has such a strong physique and can navigate through the city. This is because her real body is made of mechanical components.

After an unexpected program glitch, she was cut off from the company’s monitoring system. She reaches out to the colonized aliens and makes a deal with them: If she can infiltrate the company’s headquarters on Earth and steal the gene ball containing the genes of the original creatures, the aliens will rebuild her real body(Her appearance is a projection). After she get the ball, she regains physical body and along with the aliens and other laborers, fights against the company’s exploitation.

However, considering the workload, my animation will only include the segment where she escapes the city.

The little robot is a simple and cute character, with a screen on its face to switch expressions. However, considering the animation, the little robot might be redesigned into the shape of a skateboard.

This week, I need to adjust the narrative sequence of my shots to make each shot feel more connected rather than isolated.

I need to remove the close-up shot of the eyes and make the following adjustments to the sequence of shots 1-5：

The original sequence had some inconsistencies in continuity, particularly in how the protagonist reacts, the cut to the police car approaching, and then the close-up of the eyes. The transitions between these shots felt somewhat disjointed. Additionally, the sequence from a full-body shot to a long shot in the opposite direction, followed by a close-up, created a sense of visual confusion.

George suggested that I could show the reflection of the approaching police car in her eyes instead. I think this could be a great effect to add later in post-production, but for now, I will remove the close-up of the eyes in the previs。

Here are some shots I edited the order:

After adding the shot of placing the ball into the robot, it feels much more coherent. It also shows their reaction to the approaching police car, and then the camera moves down, giving the audience an expectation that they are preparing to escape.

In this shot, last week I tried having the character do a spin in place while avoiding the police car. She would stretch her arms to maintain balance, but I later realized this might feel a bit odd, as someone fleeing wouldn’t perform such flashy movements. It also felt unclear what she was doing.

So, I’ve decided to simplify this shot of her flying out：

In the past few weeks, I have already translated the storyboard into previs shots. So in the coming weeks, my work will focus on adjusting the pacing of certain shots, refining the transitions between them, and fine-tuning the camera shakes.

In this week’s feedback, my shots mainly have the following issues:

1.The original close-up shot lacks dynamism

So I need to add more movement. George suggested that I could have the character jump down from the ventilation duct and make the small machine’s actions more lively. I think I need to consider the interactivity of each character more carefully

2. The issue of flying speed

In Shot 6, the character notices the police car chasing her and quickly jumps onto the flying robot to escape. While reviewing the animation, I realized that the pacing of her flight needs some adjustments. Currently, her movement is too uniform, but to make the animation feel more natural and dynamic, I should adjust it like fast-slow-fast.

The action shouldn’t follow a fixed linear speed. She should jump quickly, then experience a brief slowdown, allowing the audience to see her adjusting on the flying vehicle before accelerating into a high-speed escape. In Shot 6, the middle flight segment feels too fast, so I need to slow it down slightly to enhance the pacing.

While researching animation references, I found that when accelerating, the character’s upper body may lean back slightly, while during deceleration, they tend to lean forward. This principle will help refine my character’s animation, making her movements more physically believable.

3. Distance from the Camera

In this shot, George suggested that I try bringing the character closer to the camera to create a sense of urgency and immersion while also establishing a visual contrast between the character in the foreground and the police car in the background.

After the character escapes, the movement should follow a golden spiral trajectory. However, I encountered some challenges here because both the camera and the character are moving, making it difficult to maintain this trajectory. On the other hand, if the camera remains stationary, the character would appear too small on the screen due to the large scale of the scene and the fast movement of all elements.

So I added a shot where the character moves closer to the camera：

4. Refining the character’s pose on the flying robot

In some shots where the pacing has been finalized, I need to refine the character’s poses, such as adjusting her center of gravity. When she turns, her entire body might rotate accordingly—her feet and the flying vehicle would apply force in the direction of the turn, while her body would lean into it.

5. I need to add an ending.

In the final shot, she escapes the city and look back. However, this feels end suddenly. George suggested adding a shot where she sees the distant landscape ahead and then flies toward the sun. I think this is a great idea because the natural scenery creates a strong contrast with the enclosed cyberpunk city, making the ending feel more complete and less abrupt.