2. Contingency Planning
• Storage And Back Up
• When I did my FMP last year my computer crashed twice. The first time this happened I had work that I had not saved on to one
drive. I had to get the computer fixed and retrieve the work from the hard drive. I have all my work being backed up on to cloud
storage at present which costs forty pound a year. It covers both desktops that I work on - one at my mother’s and one at my
father’s. I also have a 128GB memory stick which I back up all my files on should they become corrupted are there are
technical difficulties with accessing the cloud. The FMP Files are also backed up on the hard-drives of both computers. As I go
along I upload my work on one drive. This means that all of my work is backed up in five different places and finished work
which has been uploaded on to One Drive is backed up in five different places. I feel confident that I will not have the same
issues as last time.
• Processing Speed and Equipment
• I do have all the equipment I need at present. The fact that I work between two homes means that I also work between two
computers. The computer at my mother’s is faster so if I am doing work on software that requires more processing speed for
example rendering work made on Blender. Hence, it makes more sense that I do that work at my mother’s and more of the
writing work for my FMP at my father’s, house. This requires a little more planning in terms of the work. I knew that I would be
doing an animation project for my FMP so I thought about what extra software I may need early enough and in December I
purchased a graphics card. I have two separate microphones for both computers to use with audio software.
3. Contingency Planning
• Finance
• If one of the computers were to break then I probably don’t have the funds to replace it so
would have to consider working at the College or in one household more or keep moving one
computer between the two houses. I already have two microphones which cost £50 and £70.
The Graphics table cost £65 as I don’t feel I need a high end one. I am going to design a T-shirt
to promote the animation and costing per T-shirt cost around £20.00 covering both
manufacture and delivery. I may download some archive footage from the website
sciencephoto.com which is around £20.00 a video with a student discount. However, this may be
too expensive and I may not be able to buy as many videos as I need so I may download archive
footage for free.
•
4. Copyright Use
• My product is likely to include multiple videos and songs that I do not
own the copyright for. I will ask the youtube channels for permission
to use their videos and I will link the original videos in the description
of my animation if the ask me to. As for the songs I will edit the song
so that it sounds different and I will only be using part of the song
that are under 20 seconds. My animation is for education purposes
and is a free non-profit product so my use of the above falls under fair
use.
5. • Location
• I shouldn't have many problems with location because as I am doing an animation I
will not need to shoot any live action footage. I will only need to be in a place where
there is a computer or a place where I can work from a computer. It is likely that due to
covid there will be periods which I will not be able to work in college due to Covid
Lockdown. This will be manageable because I have a computer at my mum's house and
at my dad's house. Certain tasks I will only be able to perform on my better quality
computers. For example I will only be able to perform the work making animation
in Blender on the computer at my mum's house because other computers do not have a
powerful enough graphics card. This may mean that I have to make a plan of what type
of animation I will be working on in certain weeks for example I may choose to be at my
mum's house for a longer period of time whilst working on the Blender animation so that
I can make my animation chronologically. The computers at college do not run premiere
pro very well so I may do most of my written work in college as doing production work
will take longer on college computers. I can use a laptop for the written work and hence
wan work whilst travelling but not for the production as it lacks the processing speed on
specifications to run the software.
6. • Software
• The Main pieces of software that I plan to use for my FMP are Adobe
Anime, Blender, and Adobe photoshop, and Adobe Premier, Adobe
Audition. Should I have problems with adobe on one computer I can
attempt to fix the problem but I do have the option of two desktops.
It is unlikely that the adobe suite will go down as a whole and if it
does it is likely to be fixed very quickly but I do have the option of
using Blender if I have problems with the adobe package. The audio
software I use is Adobe Audition but there are other alternatives out
there such as Audacity should I have issues.
7. Contingency Planning
• Ability
• I have done a 5 minute claymation for my FMP last year and so picked up skills in transformations, set up lighting, created sets,
learned about manipulating movement, camera angles, dialogue, plot, theme, action, syncing voice acting to an animated
character mouth movements, use of sound effects and music, editing, controlling frame rate, timing scene and action length
around music. I am also acquainted to working in Adobe Premier and Adobe Photoshop.
• However, I have not made a 3d computer generated animation before so it will take a while to get used to the dimensions of
the blender landscape and will I need to know the real life measurements and proportions of certain structures and bodies so
that I get the scale right and they look realistic in digital animation.
• I am not very experienced at drawing so I will need to study tutorials so that the scenes made on photoshop and adobe animate
don’t look too flat. I will probably need to practice drawing scenes, ie, sets and characters on paper before drawing it again on
the graphics tablet.
• I am relatively new to using the Blender software so it will take me longer to figure out how to create new processes so I will
mainly be making things that there are tutorials for online. I plan to practice a range of production experiments and practice
new techniques before beginning the production itself.
8. Contingency Planning
• Production Time
• There is some guidance from the college regarding production time which is helpful and I am trying to use this as a guide to
time management by following the deadlines as best I can.
• The production experiments will give me a clearer idea of how long things will take in production but much will be learned
about timescale in the making of it. For instance I will probably begin with drawing the main character and this will give me an
insight into how much time it takes to draw the other characters and help me make decisions in terms of how detailed
characters can be given the time restraints and how many characters I can create.
• I am conscience that Blender can have very long render times so I will research what aspects make a Blender project graphically
demanding and see if there is an alternative to blender that looks just as good but takes less time to render. A way of reducing
render times may be to keep a scene made in blender mostly static, relying mainly on camera movement and focusing more on
the environment than actions. This will result in Blender not having to run lots of simulations which would slow down render
time.
9. Cast
I will only need one voice actor other than myself and his availability will not
be a problem as we live in the same house. I have used the voice actor
before and am happy he can do the job as he worked to high standard in my
other productions, I.e. my audio podcast and claymation. He has experience
of acting in plays and live performance of fiction and poetry.
There are also other voice actors who I am in contact with and have used
before through Discord. However, I will not need to plan to be in direct
contact with these actors as they can just send me the audio files through
Discord.
For my narration sequence I may use a more experienced voice actor who I
will locate on Fiverr and would pay for his services. This may not be
necessary though and many of the voice actors on fiverr seem to specialise in
voice acting adverts and from researching their CV's don't have experience
in playing fictional characters. These actors are also less available as they get
many requests so it could take a few weeks before my audio would be
returned.
10. Contingency Planning
• Health and Safety
• I am going to be spending a lot of time at the computer so I have picked up a decent office chair and have been careful to focus
on setting the chair at a height where my neck is not bent to avoid repetitive strain injury. I will not be getting much sunlight as I
will be indoors a lot so I am taking vitamin D supplements. I am also trying to do some exercise daily, some cardio, and strength
work as I am spending long periods sat down in front of a screen. I am trying to have short breaks to avoid my eyes straining and
headaches which I sometimes get if in front of a screen too long. I keep liquids away from the computer in order to avoid
electrical fires from spills. When I go back to college I will wear a face mask and keep at a distance from people because
of covid.
11. Power
• Power
• I am not really that worried about power as I have two desktop
computers so the likelihood of losing power on both is slim. If one of
these computers does crash my work is being regularly backed up on
to the cloud through one drive. I also intend to save my work on to a
USB stick once production begins. The computers I use do not have a
built in battery so if they were to unplug by accident they would
switch off immediately so I need to mindful of leaving cables exposed
or trip hazards.
13. Graphics tablet Experiments
• I ordered a graphics tablet from amazon. This particular model is called the Huion HS610 which is a cheaper
graphics tablet for about £60 and it had good reviews so I chose it.
• The first step was to download the software, download instructions came with the package the tablet is stored in.
The instructions say "Download Driver/Manual: https://www.huion.com/download/". I then went to this website
and typed the model number into the search bar and then I gained access to the file which allowed me to gain
access to the interface. In this interface I was able to set up key binding for the buttons on the tablets. I binded the
the keys by clicking on the visual representation then selecting the "Keyboard Key", clicking on the box, and
pressing the key you want the button to trigger. This was very useful because it means that I will not need to
take my hands off the pen and tablet which saves time and I won't lose concentration on the next part of the
drawing. I also experimented with the pressure sensitivity settings which controls how hard you need to press
down on the pen for it to get wider. The sensitivity could be changed using a line graph. The Mouse Mode option
allowed me to use the pen as a mouse as well as a brush. I tested the graphics tablet out in PhotoShop but I noticed
that the pressure sensor wasn't working so I tried to fix this by selecting add program and then selecting PhotoShop
within the Huion interface, this didn't work however. Near the button on the left of there is a circular slide with
which you can increase/decrease the brush size, zoom in and out, and scroll up and down.
https://youtu.be/_XBAnmFDpyo
I made a video of my
experiments.
14. Graphics tablet pictures
This is the storage case
The graphic tablet it's self
with the buttons on the
left side.
This is the pen used to draw on the
tablet.
The wire which connects
the tablet to a computer.
Usb adaptors which enable the graphics
tablet to connect to a phone.
15. • I followed the YouTube tutorial Head Explosion Effect in Blender! (hot) by Peter
France https://youtu.be/KoEYdCF9WWE. I have a been using this tutorial to make a head explode to use for
when I want a close up of an enemy getting shot in the head. When I was in this process I realised there were
some basic skills and processes which will come together to help assist me in making a more complex process. I
first researched how to operate the camera in Blender, one of the things I learnt was that I could control the
camera from a first person view and it can be moved about using the arrow keys. First I needed to activate the
camera view point which is done by simply clicking on the icon of the old fashioned film camera. Through fly
mode the camera could now be controlled via the WASD keys just like a first person shooter game. Fly mode can
supposedly be activated by pressing the short-cut Shift+F but this doesn't work for some reason. So instead I
clicked on the view button next to the Object mode button then in the view drop down menu I go to the
Navigation section and click Fly Navigation. The fly mode is very hard to use as it is controlled not only by the
WASD but also the Mouse and it accelerates too quickly. Here is a link of the recording I made of this
https://youtu.be/95jjI9JXVeI.
Blender Experiments 1
16. Blender Experiments 2
• Another small experiment I did was figuring out the animation process in terms of using keyframes. First I
selected an object (in this case it was the default cube) then I click on the cube's Object Properties section
and I went to the Transform section. I then went to the location X axis transformer I clicked on the dot next
to the axis which made key frame then I moved the timeline forward, changed the cube's X axis and clicked
the dot again creating a second key frame. Blender calculated the way the first key frame got to the second
and it animated the cube moving. I found this process very easy because I am used to working with key
frames in Premiere Pro and the method is almost exactly the same. I later found out that an even better way
to animate is to click Automatic Key Frame button which is a round dot above the timeline and it animates
any change, from any catergory made in the Blender project automatically. The link to my Key Frame
experiment is here: https://youtu.be/lv2x-u6n-KQ
•
17. After finishing these smaller experiments I then returned to the more challenging experiment. The first step was to Import the
model of the head from the download file stored in the tutorial video's description. I then added cloth physics and learnt some
of the basic hot keys and controls such as selecting an object and pressing G to move an object, pressing r to rotate an object,
and using the middle mouse button to change the angle of view. When I imported the model it was far too large so I went into
the model's transform settings and decreased it's X, Y, and Z scale to 0.05 which made it roughly the same size as a real head. I
then added some armatures by pressing Shift+A and selecting armatures. I then placed the armature into the neck of the head
model. When trying to work the armature in the neck I switched the head model to wireframe mode in its viewport display
options so that the head model can be seen through except for its vertexes. This makes it easier to see where the armature is
being placed. I then created a second armature extruding from the first by selecting armature then going into edit mode and
using the extrude armature tool. I extruded the second armature to the top of the head and I selected both the head model and
the armature then I right clicked them which opened the Set Parent To menu. In this menu I chose armature deform with
automatic weights. This basically means that when I move an armature the head will move and deform. This is useful for
animating things such as a head turn or nodding. However I did not want to animate the head so this part of the process was a
waste of time. The next step is to press the c hot-key which allows me to highlight vertexes on the neck of the head. I then made
a vertex group and called it Cloth Pin. I needed to assign this group to the vertexes I had selected however the assign option
wasn't there. This resulted in me having to create a new blender project and do the whole process again. After I was able to
assign the group to vertex I went into edit mode and the razor tool to cut holes in the top of the head from which brain and skull
would fly out of upon the explosion. I added a force field into the scene and placed it in the centre of the head. The force field's
strength was turned up high on a keyframe so that when I pressed play the head would be blown apart. Unfortunately this was
as far as I got in the experiment as the next step was to turn the head explosion into a simulation using the bake button. For
some reason when I would create the simulation the head would not explode it would just flop to the ground. I was unable to fix
this and the experiment had already taken up too much time so I moved on. Here is the link to the Head explosion experiment I
did: https://youtu.be/GMqCrFak6yA
Blender Experiments 3
18. Adobe Animate video reference experiment
• The objective of this experiment was to practice was animating using a video reference and learning how to use
adobe animate whilst doing this. Most of the decision making in this experiment is how closely to follow the
reference, what amount of details to include, which areas to take out, which areas to add. An example of this is
when something which may come across clearly in film footage may not be as noticeable in animated footage or
will look weird due to perspective and hence needs changing. This occurred with the characters costume as in
the animated version it is hard to tell that the brown cloth is below the white cloth so then the brown cloth
becomes either a painted pattern or some sort of shadow.
• I started off by importing the video clip from the 1973 version of The Three Musketeers. I did this by going to the
file drop down menu then I clicked on import then imported the video. This will bring up a
selection which allows me to select how I wish to import the video I was given the option to load
an external video with playback component which I selected first. It was not viable though because it is
imported as a very small box with pause and menu on its surface but when I tried to expand it it
became pixilated. I then selected the Embed H.264 video in timeline and then I went into the files and selected
The Three Musketeers clip then clicked next twice and then done. Once the video was
imported I created another layer and called it background. I then drew the background and made a new layer
called character. I thought it would be easier to draw if the pen was unable to draw outside of the page so I
went into the Huion interface and selected the working area section and I decreased the size of the work
area box to just around the page. However, I soon increased the work area again because I would zoom in to the
page and move it from left to right which resulted in the workspace area not aligning with the page and I was
unable to draw at the edges. I hid all the layers apart from the video layer and the character layer. I would
then draw over the figure in the video on the character layer then create a new keyframe on the next frame and
repeat the process again. Once the animation was finished on the character I then added some details in
environment such as the character's shadow. The finished animation is here: https://youtu.be/L_9WOKyEt8M.
The recording of the production experiment is here: https://youtu.be/vtmwXk_9n6A. I cut it down a
little as otherwise it would be too long.
20. • Royal Skies LLC (2020) Blender 2.82 Rigging Tutorial (In 2
Minutes!!!) https://youtu.be/PFaqjwpGxOc
I chose this tutorial because rigging characters is a fundemental part of animating in blender and
if character's are not rigged the position of them cannot be changed in a realistic fashion. I
planned to use this tutorial to help me rig my own characters. It is possible to download rigs
from the internet by these are paid for so I will make a bone system myself for free.
• This tutorial focusses on the positioning of armatures inside a model and how to orientate the
programme to the position of the bones down the left side so that it can identify left from
right, up and down in a bone structure. This is integral if you need to symmetrize or
automatically manipulate a group of bones so that they are automatically moved to the
correct position.
Blender Rigging
21. Blender Rigging
• Here is the link to my the experiments following the Blender rigging
tutorial: https://youtu.be/VC0W9D9r7QM
22. • Toby Rawal (2021) Easy Procedural Sand Material - Blender 2.9
EEVEE https://youtu.be/je8C03Yoc8A
• I chose this tutorial because I needed to make a texture which I could colour my
environment with. This particular tutorial on textures was most useful because it
showed me how to apply a material to different shaped UV objects already in the
scene. This means that I can give my scene more variety because I will not have
to duplicate the same objects for my environment. The tutorial was also very
simple as all that is required is to colour the material a tan colour and then
create the grains of sand using the scale of the noise texture. However this
tutorial could be more complicated if I wished to follow the second part and add
sand dunes. However, in my animation I will probably just use a flat material as
otherwise I would have to shape my objects according to the direction that the
sand dunes are facing.
Blender sand material texture
23. • This is the experiment I did following the tutorial teaching me how to make a
sand texture: https://youtu.be/qXrD0XOB3pQ
Blender sand material texture
24. • https://youtu.be/vnOg6taUwWM Olav3D Tutorials (2019) [2.8] Blender Tutorial: Wheel
Rigging for Car Animations
• This tutorial will allows me to make my motorbikes move by following an invisible object. This
was a good tutorial for me to study as it will speed up my animation process as I will not have
to move every single part of the motorbike structure individually and it also allows me to
animate the wheels depending on how far the object has moved which will add realism to my
animation. This process is fairly simple as all you have to do is parent the vehicle to the object
then add a driver to the wheels and you can input an expression that will determine how
many times the wheels rotate in regard to the distance moved by the object. A problem may
arise when I make my animation if I wish my wheels to rotate to the side whilst rotating
forward. This may make the wheels move at a diagonal slant which I do not want. Also a
problem may arise if the point of rotation is not central on the object.
Blender Car rigging and wheel spin tutorial
25. • This is the experiment I did following the car rigging and wheel spin
tutorial: https://youtu.be/T-GuzC5oXJs. However this experiment was unsuccessful because
wheel didn't rotate from the correct point.
Blender Car rigging and wheel spin tutorial
26. • https://youtu.be/AnRQhH3fEDY Surfaced Studio (2020) Texture Painting in Blender for
Absolute Beginners
• This tutorial will allow me to paint different areas of a model individually. This will be useful
when making the clothes of my characters as the garments will not just be the one colour and
I'll be able to create different sections of the clothes and use more complicated painting
methods such as smudge. This tutorial also teaches me how to assign a material to an object.
The first step of this tutotial is to give the 3D model a 2D map which tells Blender which part of
the model it is you want to draw on. This is done by going to the objects UV options and giving
it a UV map. After this a new material must be assigned to the object then assigned to the uv
map otherwise there would be no surface to edit. The tutorial also talks about using paint
masks which is when a face selected and you are unable to draw outside of this face. This
would save time as you will not accidentally draw on a part of the object that do not intend to
and then have to redraw.
Blender texture painting
27. • This is the experiment I did based of the information I received from the texture painting
tutorial: https://youtu.be/200CReig220
Blender texture painting
28. • https://youtu.be/0ybRLcBU564 THE LUWITZ ART (2019) Shading a Human Skin in Blender 2.80
(Quick Tip)
• This tutorial will allow me to create more realistic colour and lighting for a Human Skin texture.
I know that I am going to create a human character so it will definitely be a good idea to give
them realistic skin as a section of the animation will be focussed on their faces in dialogue. The
realistic skin is achieved in the shading editor and the first step is to turn the subsurface
modifier to 1 which adds a subsurface glow to the skin texture. The subsurface radius can be
tweaked in order for the right amount of light to pass through the skin. When adding a
subsurface colour it can override the original base colour but to have both of these shadings
visible at the same time they should be connected using a RGB node. This tutorial was helpful
in terms of remembering information applying it to future work because he not only teaches
you what to do but also the reason for doing it which gave me an understanding of how to
apply the process in different situations.
Blender subsurface skin texture
29. • This is the experiment I did to test the out the processes learnt from the Subsurface skin
texture tutorial: https://youtu.be/ycRC8l-XhP0
Blender subsurface skin texture
30. • PIXXO 3D (2020) Add Clothing To Rigged Characters- Blender 2.83
Alpha https://youtu.be/qI8qeLkUu_c
• This was a tutorial on how to make a dress and to add cloth physics to it. Even though it is not
my intention that either of my characters will be wearing a dress one of them will have a
trenchcoat which looks similar to a dress especially as the animation will have a low amount of
polygons. I can turn the dress into a trenchcoat if I This tutorial also lays out a lot of good
ground rules for creating clothes in general. For example when half of the cube is deleted and
a mirror modifier is added so that whatever sculpting occurs will be duplicated on the other
side of the object. This will save time and reduce imperfections. This tutorial also taught me
that an objects quality can be improved by subdividing and adding a shade smooth modifier. I
am wary of adding the cloth physics when I make my animation because when I added cloth
physics in my head explosion experiment it slowed down my computer too much.
Blender Adding clothes to rigged characters
31. • This is the experiment I did following the adding clothes to a rigged character
tutorial: https://youtu.be/Rbily4LnfoE
Blender Adding clothes to rigged characters
32. • Grant Abbitt (2018) Sculpting Armour
Workflow https://youtu.be/Gbc0DY950Ho
• This was a useful tutorial for me to learn as I had an idea I would be using armour or at least a
solid piece of clothing. This tutorial gave me some useful information about show to make a
object which you wished to make your armour out of stick to the character. In the tutorial this
was done by adding a shrink wrap modifier to the mesh which causes the object to wrap
around the character and then activate the snap to face option which will make the edit points
also stick to the character. He also explains a solution to the armour clipping through the
character which is to increase the outset in the shrink wrap modifier which will push the
object away from the faces of the character. He also uses the solidify modifier to add depth to
the object. I think this toturial would have been more useful to me if he had explained the
modelling more especially how to use brushes.
Blender sculpting armour
33. • This is the experiment I did for the blender sculpting armour tutorial:
https://youtu.be/Zcqro4FVDE8
Blender sculpting armour
34. Bibliography of Tutorials
• Abbitt, Grant; (2018) Sculpting Armour Workflow https://youtu.be/Gbc0DY950Ho
• France, Peter; Head Explosion Effect in Blender! (hot) https://youtu.be/KoEYdCF9WWE.
• Olav3D Tutorials (2019) [2.8] Blender Tutorial: Wheel Rigging for Car
Animations https://youtu.be/vnOg6taUwWM
• PIXXO 3D (2020) Add Clothing To Rigged Characters- Blender 2.83
Alpha https://youtu.be/qI8qeLkUu_c
• Rawal, Toby; (2021) Easy Procedural Sand Material - Blender 2.9
EEVEE https://youtu.be/je8C03Yoc8A
• Royal Skies LLC (2020) Blender 2.82 Rigging Tutorial (In 2
Minutes!!!) https://youtu.be/PFaqjwpGxOc
• Surfaced Studio (2020) Texture Painting in Blender for Absolute
Beginners https://youtu.be/AnRQhH3fEDY
• THE LUWITZ ART (2019) Shading a Human Skin in Blender 2.80 (Quick
Tip) https://youtu.be/0ybRLcBU564
35. Catalogue of My Experiments
• Parsons, Bronte; Key Frame experiment https://youtu.be/lv2x-u6n-KQ
• Parsons, Bronte; Camera Movement Experiment; https://youtu.be/95jjI9JXVeI.
• Parsons, Bronte; Blender Rigging Tutorial: https://youtu.be/VC0W9D9r7QM
• Parsons, Bronte; Sand texture: https://youtu.be/qXrD0XOB3pQ
• Parsons, Bronte; This is the experiment I did based of the information I received from the
texture painting tutorial: https://youtu.be/200CReig220
• Parsons, Bronte; Subsurface skin texture experiment: https://youtu.be/ycRC8l-XhP0
• Parsons, Bronte; Car Rigging And Wheel Spin Tutorial https://youtu.be/T-GuzC5oXJs
• Parsons, Bronte; Blender Sculpting Armour experiment https://youtu.be/Zcqro4FVDE8
• Parsons, Bronte; Adding clothes to a rigged character experiment
https://youtu.be/Rbily4LnfoE
• Parsons, Bronte; Graphic Tablets Experiment https://youtu.be/_XBAnmFDpyo I
