Despite having a clearer image of a final goal, development still weaves in every direction. Here’s what I’ve been doing for the last few weeks.
I finally reached a conclusion at least on the scene that I would build. While it’s somewhat cliche, I decided a light house was by far the best option, not least because the animation could fit really nicely into the flow of the song. So of course, I’ve been building that in Blender.
I honestly really enjoy making buildings in 3D. It satisfies the inner architect in me that never got to see the light of day. Also it’s easier than people. Speaking of…
I really don’t like making characters. I’ve never liked it. It doesn’t come naturally to me at all. Do I want them more stylistic and cartoon-like? Or do I want something more realistic? I honestly don’t know and I don’t like anything that I’ve managed so far. I mean, I’m quite proud of the later model (right) since I made that without anything other than a basic rig for reference, but I’m not feeling it. Realistically, we’re not going to be able to get so close that we can see the character details, but I’d still like to get the right look and feel for the whole piece.
At the same time, I’ve been playing a bit more with Unity, in particular learning how to get rig animations from Blender to Unity, and how to use the timeline feature, which it seems will pretty much drive the entire animated scene. This is basically how cut-scenes are made in games and I guess ultimately this whole project is one big looping cut scene that you can pan around.
All in all, here’s the latest version of what I’ve made so far, excluding the lighthouse.
Interestingly, using the timeline means that the vast majority of the work will require pretty much no code at all. A shame in some ways since I really set out to learn more programming and interactivity, but a blessing too since it means it’s much more feasible that this will actually happen and not end up yet another forgotten project.
Next I need to make the full scene itself, in particular the characters. I need to sketch out some more ideas, get the style right, as well as focusing on lighting and colour throughout the whole scene. Then it’s a matter of animating it all to time, adding a user interface and lots of testing.
So still lots to do, but we’re definitely getting somewhere.