Nelly Luckett : BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester

Pugwash and the Young Adventurer is an experimental 2.5D film, exploring mixed media processes. Join my younger self on her first encounter with the world of animation. Who knows what adventure might be ahead? I hope you enjoy my completed graduation film. Thank you to Isabel Ryan and John Ryan's family for letting me tell the story of my meeting with him. John Ryan was an incredibly talented man and I hope I have done his work justice. Thank you to Blossom for the music 'Balcary Hornpipe'. And finally many thanks to the tutors on the Computer Animation Arts course, and everyone who has supported me during my time at UCA.

Third year has definitely proven itself to be a year of new experiences for me. In ‘Pugwash and the Young Adventurer’, I took on a project full of new opportunities and challenges to create something entirely out of my comfort zone. I wanted to use this self-directed project to push my understanding of what Maya could do more and to broaden the way that I could produce work. Creating a 2.5D world definitely provided a new system to work in, as well as lots of challenges. Not being able to rotate characters in the traditional sense, and only being able to use the front view definitely made me think about alternate ways of working. I couldn’t build a scene and then choose my camera angle, the scene had to be very specifically designed and built in order to create the shot I was intending. This was very different to working in a traditional 3D pathway. I have also gained a lot more understanding of the limitations and differences that a 2D rig has compared to a 3D rig. There are som...

  Pugwash and the Young Adventurer When approaching the subject of what I wanted my major project to be, I wanted something very personal to my own experiences, and something that would take me down an entirely different path to the other projects we had previously completed. I felt that it also needed to give me an outcome that was directed towards the career path that I intend to pursue after graduation. I am interested in projection mapping and bring animation into 3D and performance spaces, to break the barrier between animation and the ‘real’ world. This led me to wanting to produce a more experimental film that forced me to learn new methods of producing animation, outside of the standard 3D pipeline we are taught throughout our three years on the course. As a self-directed project, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to discover something new.  After exploring a number of different narratives and concepts, one particular story or memory pr...

This is the animated 2D turn around for Ellie. As with Pugwash it wasn't possible to do a 360 degree turn around, so here is an animated 2D turn around.

This is the animated turn around for my 2D Pugwash rig. Since the rig is made entirely out of 2D planes, it is not possible to do a conventional 360 degree turn around, so instead I have animated him in each of his views to create a fun turn around effect and allow you to see all sides of our friendly pirate.

Today I completed the cave set for the film. This is where Pugwash and Ellie fly in the boat to hide from the error messages. I am happy with the fact that the light looks like it is coming from the outside. This back-lit effect is something I'm very happy with. I also did some debug renders to show the level of complexity in this low light scene. Basic  Occlusion Wireframe

Today I have been focusing on getting the lighting correct on the shot of the outside of the party room, as this corridor needs to look quite foreboding and threatening as the narrative is discussing how Ellie is feeling concerned and confused by the situation she is in. I am quite happy about how the scene looks overall, however the lights in the ceiling are casting strange orbs around the light on the ceiling. This is something I will need to rectify in the final renders.

Since last posting this set, I have made a few tweaks to this set. This included refining some of the geometry on the bookshelves and rearranging some of the items to make the desk look a little more used. I found that when I layered the render with an occlusion render, the scene became a lot more in depth and impressive. I think I will probably implement this in the final version. 

This was the wave test for the film. I had the waves working, however they needed a bit of correction to ensure that the boat actually looked like it was floating in water rather than being static and floating in the middle of the scene without being connected to anything. This is the height of wave that would be seen when Ellie and Pugwash first swing on to the boat. Wave Test

Today I received the music for the background sound of Pugwash and the Young Adventurer. This tune was written and performed by a brilliant musician and accordionist called Blossom who I know through the folk scene. It should work incredibly well as the tune is similar to the hornpipe everyone knows for Pugwash, but is actually a brand new tune so is not directly stealing it. I have been given full permission to use this music however I need for the film, so I'm very excited. The Balcary hornpipe:

The last few days I have been working on the finishing touches for the Pirate ship and beginning to edit the voice over together. This means that there hasn't been a lot of visual work going on, but a large amount of behind the scenes activity in progress. I did however complete the pirate ship to a state I am happy with, so I pleased to share the first completed render with you for that. My next step is going to be to plug the boat into the sea scene and try and make it look as though the boat is floating in the sea on the 2D planes. In the meantime, please enjoy the current render of the boat.

The last few days I have been working on the sets for the film. These are fairly time consuming but are producing some very satisfying outcomes. The interior of John Ryan's workshop Wave test for the storm

Today I completed my shot list for the film. The images are below, but for more detail the link is:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTzP5qG11URdtMYmSkYNjDbG08Abg3SfVX6Y9iHRFRQTaA032wkPLljbVSMq47WaebdvhS9jKudGM72/pubhtml Shot List Shot contents

The rigs for Ellie are finally complete. I've had some issues with not fully understanding the tutorials for the 2D rigging. Unfortunately I had to scrap my first set of rigs as the joints were too far apart and this had caused issues with the squash and stretch and other elements of the rig. There were also complicated issues with the controls. I attempted to undo my initial mistakes, however I found that this damaged the rigging more and more and lead to more issues rather than fixing them. For this reason I decided to go back to the skinned characters and redo all the rigging. I also hadn't accounted for needing to be able to make the skirt move, so I effectively had to give Ellie a tail to control her skirt. The joints created in this would control the skirt vertices. This was not in my initial rigs, and required some re skinning, so ultimately this was a better option. The second time around it also took me half of the time that it took me the first time. This will als...

Pugwash and the Young Adventurer Script 2.0 by Eleanor 'Nelly' Luckett on Scribd

Yesterday was once again the amazing vertex conference. A few people from my year attended last year and we found it incredibly useful, so wanted to attend once again. Unfortunately we only managed to get day 1 tickets, as the full passes for both days seemed to sell out incredibly quickly! Maybe everyone is cottoning on to how good a show this is! The day 1 agenda comprised of a talk from Dylan Sisson on the abilities and features of both the newest version of RenderMan (Pixar’s in house rendering engine) and how this applied to the creation of Toy Story 4 with some exciting insights and clips to demonstrate some key areas. This was incredibly exciting for me as some of the capabilities really blended well into the creation and editing of simulations etc, which falls into the remit of Projection Mapping, which is what I am potentially aiming for post-graduation. I’ve included my notes from this session below. This was then followed by a panel discussing whether photorealistic ...

This is the rough animatic for Pugwash and the Young Adventurer. This is a visual representation to run alongside the previously uploaded script. The current run time is 2 mins 45 seconds. This is a reasonable length I think, and achievable in the time I have left. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Today I completed the texturing and construction process of building Pugwash in Maya. The next step with him is completing the skeleton and skinning processes.

Today I received the last of the voice over self tapes back for the young ladies applying to voice Ellie as the narrator in my film. Below are each of the voice over self tapes. Amber, aged 11. Bertie, aged 8.  Betsy, aged 5.  Esme, aged 10.  Hettie, aged 8.  Matilda, aged 7.  Although not all of the tapes are the best quality, I can still get a good idea of how their voices would sound in the film, from this sample of the script. Although all of the girls read very well, I have decided that the actress I wanted to go with is Matilda. Her voice has a lovely balance of confidence, innocent and happiness. I am going to record her in the next couple of weeks.

Today I created the illustrator files for Pugwash as well as pieces files which will then be modelled and textured into being the model and rig for his character. I’m very happy with how these came out and I am looking forward to building him tomorrow.