First, I’d like to define “animation” myself.
Animation is an art form and technique that creates the illusion of motion by continuously and rapidly playing a series of still images (frames) and utilizing the principle of “persistence of vision” in the human eye. This is the scientific definition.
I believe animation isn’t about making a static object move, but rather about drawing moving objects. An animator isn’t manipulating a pre-existing, static puppet; they’re capturing, creating, and defining a fleeting moment of motion on a blank canvas. When creating animation, the animator is the creator, able to reset time, space, mechanics, and everything else in the realm of real-world physics. From a metaphysical perspective, animation isn’t an imitation of reality, but a revelation of essence; it can bypass appearances and directly depict essence, spirit, and ideas. I think this is the only way to distinguish animation from film.
Secondly, I want to explain to myself what the FMP I made is for.
The primary purpose of my FMP is to explore my ego and envision its future. I believe this is something that most ordinary people experience, so this FMP is also a message I want to convey to the audience.
Character modeling&Textureing
I removed the character’s glasses, a decision I made after reflecting on the entire film and redefining the protagonist’s identity. I felt that within the limited timeframe of the animation, if I didn’t redesign a scene and shot specifically for the glasses, their symbolic and labeling capabilities would be very limited, only hinting at the protagonist’s past. Therefore, I chose to remove this object, allowing the audience’s attention to focus entirely on the changes in the character’s facial animation.
I used Maya to rewire my model, making the entire body smoother, and added lines to the movable parts of the character. This was to prevent bugs from occurring when animating the character after rigging.
In Substance Painter, I began experimenting with rendering the character’s materials. Even during modelling, I had envisioned the character’s facial features, adding prominent dark circles beneath the protagonist’s eyes. This served the narrative arc of my animation. Within the constrained animation runtime, it proved challenging to comprehensively explain the cause, progression, and outcome of every event. Consequently, to a certain extent, I had anticipated shaping the character’s appearance within reasonable bounds.