Proposal

## **Overview**

### **Scenario**

The Lead and a team of animators (4-10) are in charge of creating a short cinematic (Less than 60 seconds) within 8 weeks.  The Animation Lead will be responsible for supplying the environment populated with the necessary free rigs and props.  Each animator will be assigned an individual shot from the animatic and be expected to finish all the phases of animation before the deadline.  When the deadline arrives the animators will be responsible for playblasting their finished shot and turning their scene in to the Animation Lead, who will compile it into a final cinematic in Unreal and release it to the public with the animator’s name credited at the bottom of their respective shots and in the end credits.

### **Purpose**

The cinematic collab is a project meant to introduce animators to cinematic production and working with a Lead.  The idea is to teach animators how to interact with management, work within a team, adhere to a style, take critique, and understand the limitations of working in production.

### **Who Can Participate**

Any animator from the AnimState discord who has access to Maya 2019 or above can throw their hat in the ring.  It's important to take a wide variety of experience levels to give everyone an equal chance to experience production.  Animators have to at least know how to work in Maya, how to animate, playblast, and troubleshoot their own problems.  This is production, not a tutorial.  The intent is for people to learn through doing this but the Lead can’t afford to hold their hand and introduce them to the Graph Editor.

### **Team Structure**

Lead Animator - Responsible for the creative vision, direction, animatic, and scene setup. Also responsible for critiquing all the animators in the collab.

Producer - Support staff that answer questions, updates documentation, and manages the discord server. Can serve as an animator in a pinch.

Animator - The bulk of the team that is responsible for taking a shot from an animatic to a polished deliverable.

### **Selection Process**

Since there are a limited number of shots not everyone who applies can participate like in a normal collab.  Animators will submit samples of their work using this form. It can be a reel, a youtube channel, or just their most recent animations.

Application Example

Afterwards candidates will be evaluated using this rubric and divided into A, B, and C level animators.

Rubric Spreadsheet

The cinematic shots will be assigned an A, B, and C level difficulty. Then, to avoid bias, final candidates will be selected randomly. If there’s a lack of interest for a level then candidates from different pools will be used.

## **I. Prep Work**

The animators will have everything they need to get started immediately.  Scenes will be accessible and readable as possible without the addition of third party tools.

### **Story Pitches**

#### Brainstorming

The first step is to generate an idea. Because this is a community project, ideas should be able to come from everyone in the community. This starts with a brainstorming session. Any member of the AnimState discord can propose as many ideas as they want. The Lead or Producer collects them all and adds them as a numbered list on the wiki.

Idea Brainstorm Example

#### Voting

After the brainstorming deadline, members of the AnimState community can vote for their three favorite ideas. Their picks get assigned points based on their pick order.

 Pick 2
 Pick 3

So a member can vote for ideas 12, 2, and 13. Those ideas would be awarded 3, 2, and 1 points respectively. All votes are tallied by the Lead or Producer and added to a spreadsheet like this one. Voting for Collab Prototype

The top five ideas go on to the final selection process.

#### Final Selection

The Lead picks the final idea based on viability, vision, and diverse content. It's tweaked to fit the criteria of the collab and then given a treatment.

### **Treatment**

The starting point of any cinematic is a write up outlining what’s happening in the scene.  A brief summary, visual blockout, mood board, character motivation, and list of references.  A copy of the write up will be included in the project file and accessible online.

Treatment Example

### **Project Folder**

The Lead will be responsible for setting up a project folder so the Animators can start working without any additional setup.  Maya files will be Maya Ascii (.ma) 2019 to allow animators to use later versions of the software.  References to rigs, textures, and environments will be set up ahead of time, and paths to referenced files will be localized (“/rig/Mery.ma” instead of “C:/Documents/Dave/Cinematic/rig/Mery.ma”) so a project can be set and avoid file path issues.

An animator will only have to download the project once from the Lead’s Google Drive.

### **Rigs**

The rigs provided will be the 2019 version of free to use, non-commercial rigs to avoid copyright disputes and increase accessibility.  A version of the rig will be contained in the project file with all referenced textures localized.  Permission will have to be obtained from the rig owner to make sure there’s no dispute.

### **Props**

If props are required for the scene the Lead will be responsible for modeling, rigging, texturing and adding features to the props as needed or at least acquire them.  Props will be referenced into the maya file before it gets to the animator.

### **Environment**

The Lead will be responsible for providing the environment to the animators.  Because it took so long to create the environment last project (and wasn't too good looking) the environment will most likely be purchased. The environment will be referenced into the scene.  The scene will most likely be purchased to reduce the setup work for the project.

### **Animatic**

The Lead will be responsible for creating the initial animatic for the sequence.  Camera position, FOV, and settings, character/prop blockout with rough timing, and any audio cues.  The animatic will be distributed along with the project files.

### **Scene Files**

Everything in the scene will be set up and ready to go for the animator:

* Camera settings will be set and locked, but transforms will be available.
* Environment elements that shouldn’t be animated will be in a layer and set to reference  [ R ]
* Rigs, props, and env will be referenced
* Everything will be named.  *Everything.*
* The scene will only contain the shot the animator is assigned to
* Render settings will be set and uniform across all shots

### **Briefs**

No one is going to read all the instructions at once.  Even paid people don’t do that.  A short document will have to go out with each phase to show what the requirements are.

## **II.  File Management**

Once the animators download the original project folder that should be it.  The only thing they’d have to turn in is the playblast.

### **Project Folder**

A standard Maya project will be the folder structure, with unnecessary folders trimmed out for clarity.  Rigs and environments will be contained in the scene folder.  Documents will be contained in the main project folder so it’s the first thing people see.

### **Submissions**

Videos and scene files will be dropped into a Google Drive folder at regular intervals.  Easiest thing to do would be to have Animators overwrite their videos with each submission.

## **III.  Animation**

All animation will be hand keyed and phases are required because animators need to understand that they’re not animating alone.  They have other people to consider.  If Animators go from zero to polish without getting a review their style might clash with the rest of the sequence.  Each phase will get reviewed once.

### **Reviews**

Critiques will be done as a syncsketch submission with the Lead giving video critiques.  Syncsketch links will be made public to the team so other members may also give feedback.  But like in production the Lead has final say on notes.

Example Critique

### **Progress Updates**

Weekly progress of the whole scene will be shown to the Collab to give them a sense of progress and check for continuity. Every two weeks a progress video will be shown on #strut-yo-stuff so the whole discord can be aware of the collab’s progress. Animators will be required to submit their scenes as well in cases where people have to back out and a new person needs to pick up where they left off.

Example Progress Video

### **Kickoff**

An initial video will be put out explaining what the Lead is expecting from the animator.  It points out trouble areas, emotional beats, and significant moments.  I was thinking about doing one for each shot, but I think just one video going over everything should be fine.  The video will be public on youtube so people can see the process.  The animators will also be responsible for reading the cinematic write up to get a full understanding of the scene.

Example Kickoff

### **Blockout**

Taking the animatic to the end of the stepped phase, including all breakdowns and contacts.  If animators prefer to start in spline that works, but Things the Lead is looking for here:

* Readable action
* Performance
* Silhouettes
* Rough timing
* Key facial expression
* Key finger poses

Example Blockout

### **Spline**

Once blockout has been reviewed and approved, animators can take their shot into spline and do a first pass.  Things to watch out for:

* Arcs
* Contacts
* No pops, gimbal, or isolated movement
* Final timing
* Continuity
* Facial breakdowns
* Finger breakdowns

Example Spline

### **Polish**

The final stage of animation.  Animators will have different definitions of where polish starts, but if anything this is a chance for them to get a second critique and finalize their animation.

* Weight
* Overlap
* Smears (if needed)
* Fidgets
* Chaos
* Final fingers
* Final face

Example Polish

## **IV. Final Product**

The final product will take all the playblasts from the animators and edit them together to create a cohesive story.  Video will be 1920x1080.  The final video will be put on YouTube and shared on social media.  Nothing will be monetized or used for personal gain.

Example Final Product

### **Audio**

Audio was something that was sorely missed in the prototype. In this version I want to add background music, but don't want to increase the number of staff or variables. So my proposal is just to buy a track from artlist.io

Sound effects would be another great addition, but it would hinge on the addition of an SFX artist and would ideally only take them an hour or two to finish the work.

### **VFX**

A VFX artist has offered to participate in the collab. Proxy vfx will be used in the animatic and as a backup so the elements will at least be represented.

### **Unreal 5**

Assuming the rigs and environments used are game-ready, there's no reason we couldn't put this in Unreal 5 for an extra level of polish. The only additional responsibility would be for the Lead or the Animators to export their animations as FBXs.

### **Credits**

The AnimState logo will go at the beginning and end.  The animator’s name will be highlighted at the bottom of each shot so it’s clear who worked on what.  Then there will be an end credit sequence that lists all the animators, the Lead, as well as any asset contributors.