Webinars on Preproduction & Animation, VFX Pipeline, 3D Charcter Design 2021 @ ICAT, Bangalore

Department of Animation, ICAT Design and Media College, Bangalore, organized a Webinar on 3D Charcter Design on 8th January 2021.

Mr. Apsal Yakub - VFX Pipeline

The Webinar was taken by Mr. Apsal Yakub, DNEG, Lead. He started the webinar by demonstrating with his demo reel the way a portfolio has to be planned to be presented to a company.

He then introduced the interface of Houdini and explained the VFX pipeline. Further also explained how lighting works and how a person has to gather reference before he even starts it on a 3D platform. He gave tips about lighting from nature, how to execute it and how to be a good lighting artist. How Houdini plays a key role in terms of being a good lighting artist. Insights on how the industry is evolving in terms of implementing procedural workflows and how powerful a procedural workflow is for a 3D artist to create some quick workflows was also highlighted. Using Houdini he demonstrated how an artist can create procedural rocks with good variation with simple procedural workflows. He also spoke about how important the foundations are, that are being laid by institutions or colleges.

In the concluding part, he shared his experience and for a question posed by one of the students asked “How do you operate or switch across multiple software’s?” to which he replied saying “It takes time to get to that stage, if one is familiar with one software package later he can do experiments on similar packages and will be able to add a wide range of software’s in his CV.”

Mr. Santhosh Dora - Preproduction & Animation

The Webinar was taken by Mr. Santhosh Dora explaining how to survive in the industry, going through ups and downs. He fostered the students to face challenges across the platform and to work with pre production with the producers and directors, keeping in mind the aim of producing the best quality works. Mr. Dora guided the students how to be successful and grow in this industry, to create their own entertainment channels and manage them.

Mr. Dora made the students aware of the different stages of Production. Preproduction working with pre planning and brainstorming is the first stage, character design, storyboarding animatics scripting and screenplay. These are the stages that the directors come across before coming to production to reduce the cost of production.

Talking about Pipeline, he listed a number of studios which go through the process of pre-production. Animators will not be provided with story boarding. They understand the technical pitch from the supervisor or director above. Taking storyboard as a reference is good but not the copying method of poses from storyboard. Having a good practice of one process while switching to another studio and getting to adapt to that process. Give some time to think about the story and aesthetics of the shot. 

YouTube is an open market. One doesn't need to depend on jobs. If someone is good at storytelling, he can pull out the production with minimal investment. Even he can make a good income source. More than animation, it is storytelling there. Story characters and screenplay should be interrelated for good outcome. According to the story we have to design characters and screenplay. It is the sound and the story which carries 80% of the essence of the appeal. As an animator one should be capable of doing any sort of animation. He should have the ability to switch between the qualities and stay keen in doing the projects. One should focus on improving their skills. 

It is not really necessary for a 2D animator to be good in 3D animation or vice versa. It’s all about understanding animation. However 2D knowledge helps you in good posing, because 3D animation is all about good posing, timing and spacing.  

There are few instances where there is a fast workflow, with less details and has a target to finish in a certain time period. All your goals should be to meet their requirements. 

Over performing and not providing the work in the given time frame will give a negative impact as the company fails in client delivery. Director will plan workflows depending on the budget of the film.

Mr. Debjit Das - 3D Charcter Design

The next Webinar then was taken by Mr. Debjit Das, with a Specialization in Character Design; he gave an overview of the Rafiki character which he made using reference from lion king. He also explained the workflow of the fur/Groom using x-gen in Maya, the way it is done and implemented in industry. He explained the work process of Dig double character and how one can sculpt pores on the surface of a character using Zbrush.

His instructed the students:

To start with a character one has to create a Mood board of it, a collage which helps in getting the form, look and feel of the character. For which one can browse and collect some high reference images, do a comp with Photoshop or nuke. Then try to decide on the color palette before starting to decide the color, look and feel. 

Before planning a character try to get the base model of the character using Z brush or Maya, use it to build the model shape and form of the character. In software’s like character creator you will be able to get some good base meshes. You can still go with a traditional way if you want to create everything from the scratch you can start with a sphere.

He also gave instruction on how important shades are and how to use shaders in Arnold settings to plug displacement in a shader. Explained about different maps like Albedo, Specular, displacement, bump, difference between displacement and Z-displacement. 

So, the session ended up in a very inspiring note where the students acquired all the information related to the topic.