Finding ArcadiaA project by

Simon Eden & Fiona Ware-Heine

Initial Concept ArtI tried to capture the flavour of the film in my initial concept art, only having read the script.

In the above collage, I collected inspiration from images online and created an atmospheric collage of what I imagined one of the shots could look like.While in the image on the left I explored the idea of the colour purple running through plants and bushes in this digital sketch. This was before we had decided on a monkey as the animal companion.

Reference Images and inspiration

Initial costume and prop designsI took inspiration from classic science fiction illustrators to begin designing the costumes and props. I always considered practicality, as the characters would have been trekking though rough terrain.

Refined costume designs

Matte PaintingConcept

It was part of the original plan that I would create the matte painting for shot 19. But as production progressed it became apparent that I had neither the time nor the necessary specialist skillset needed to create the digital matte painting. This was one of the early designs that I did towards the production of the matte painting.

Warden Designs

I had an open brief for the design of the warden, but it was suggested that the design could include certain elements; a tentacle monster who represented nature, caused light passing through it to refract, and who had liquid churning inside.I explored these ideas in various forms, but I also kept in mind the technical requirements that each design would take to realise virtually.

Simon and I both had very strong ideas of the composition of some of the shots and I was able to visualise my interpretation of the script through the storyboards. We used my storyboards to map out the layout of the set for the actresses and Simon took some of the better camera compositions and realised them in the previz. Storyboards

A day on set in the Motion Capture room

In order to record the vocal and facial performances of our actresses, they were fitted with facecams. This gave us fantastic reference footage to aid the animation process.

It took us a full day to set up and capture our actresses Lindsay and Pascale. Simon was the shoot Director and I acted as the Production Manager and Layout Supervisor. We took multiple takes of each sequence to get both the performance that we wanted and the best takes in terms of data quality. Simon and I had held a practice shoot beforehand to iron out all the technical problems and to mark outthe set on the floor. This allowed us to spend as much time as possible directing Lindsay and Pascale to give the best performances.

We took additional reference footage of every take and made notes in a spreadsheet which made it easier to refer back to the footage afterwards. I also represented the monkey character with a marker on the end of a stick which gave us a reference and an eyeline in the animation scenes.

Monkey Animation

I used keyframe animation techniques to give life to the monkey. I had a picture in my head of the motions that I wanted the monkey to do and I found video reference of real monkeys for some of the key movements. I approached each shot differently depending on the complexity and rhythm of the motions. For example shots 01-10 I blocked in step keys in order to focus on the timings, whereas in shot 11 I blocked in spline keys to keep flowing motion curves.

Shot 36 MonkeyI knew that the complete turn of the monkey in shot 36 would be a challenge, so I looked to find reference that was as close as possible that I could copy frame by frame. The closest reference I could find was this from Rhinohouse which showed the sort of turn that I wanted, albeit on uneven ground and starting on the opposite leg. I had to mirror this reference in my head when posing my monkey so that it would fit with the continuity from the previous shot.I then had to transition out of this turn into a lazy gallop, similar to the gallop in shot 11. I remembered the same pattern oflegs from that shot and worked into that from the turn. Because of severe time restrictions I made sure not to animate more than was absolutely necessary, meaning that the moment the monkey is out of shot he slides off after only two steps.I found particularly when animating this shot and the monkey in shot 34-35 that I was getting much quicker at animating with more practice, and there was a noticeable improvement in quality. I am very pleased with these monkey shots and I feel proud of what I have achieved.

Facial Animation

I animated the faces mainly using a set of blend shape sliders which gave me control of different facial muscles.I had video reference of the actresses from the set and I had a mirror so that I could use my own face as reference.I had to learn about the differences between subtle expression changes, and more obvious facial movements like lip syncing.

Lip syncing can take a long time, especially for complex phrases, and I had to factor this into my estimations.I had great difficulty with the phrase Right now I would settle for breathable air, for example, as I found the facial shapes hard to replicate and the timing challenging.I found that it was always good to check a playblast with the textures turned on before finalling a shot, as they could make a huge difference to the way that facial shapes appeared and highlighted any eye and eyebrow movement in a way that the animation scene playblasts did not.

The Birds

I learnt a lot from the birds debacle. The way I approached it, so as to avoid references within references, was to create one bird flap cycle and then import this scene seven times with various offsets to create a flock. This scene would then be referenced in the final shot.

As it turned out, this was a somewhat flawed idea as the scene became so heavy that it was liable to crash at the slightest thing. This meant that making any changes to the motion path they were on was almost impossible and so amplified any odd movements of the flock.

If I were to do a flock of birds again I would use a different method, perhaps instancing or baking the animation onto the vertex level to prevent the scene crashing from too many bird rigs.

Simon worked extremely hard on the rendering of the project, and faced many difficulties and technical problems. I tried my best to work as quickly and as cleanly as I could to make his life easier. As with any collaboration there was compromise from both sides. For example, Simon was very helpful and quick to respond to my requests regarding rig changes, and I delivered animation scenes on time when he requested them.There are a couple of instances where I feel that the animation could be slightly more polished, however, due to rendering schedules or miscommunications, this was not possible.

We had to problem solve much during this project. One particular example saw me unable to move any of the body controls on the rigs either in university or on my laptop. After much testing and frustration we determined that if I used Simons Maya Preferences instead of my own, the rig worked as intended. Obviously this wasnt an idea solution, but was the best that was possible in the time.