Скачать или смотреть Roadside Takeout || CGI 3D Animated Short Film

A starving vulture must subdue a wary human traveller in order to acquire his next meal.

Hey guys! In case y'all were wonder, yes, this bad boy here is why I haven't uploaded since my last update video. This is the first short film I've completed here at college as a sophomore student in our DDA program! In fact, this will be the first of three short films I'll have made over the course of being a student here; fall semester sophomore film (this one), spring semester sophomore film, and of course, the senior thesis.

To be honest this project was a strenuous task that I did not properly prepare for mentally. I'm not proud to admit that I did most of the animation work here within the last 2 weeks, which should explain the sloppiness of several shots. This thing is absolutely littered with mistakes (the vulture's talons clipping through hiker boi's shoulders being a prime example), but it's too late for me to change anything. Regardless, this assignment was a huge obstacle for me to overcome and thus I saw it fit to upload here on my channel! I also wished to impart what I've learned from this experience and share it with all of you fellow aspiring animators out there looking to jump into the industry!

Project Info:
We were tasked with the prompt to create a 30 to 45 second long short film animated in Autodesk Maya and rendered to perfection within the 15-week timeframe of the fall 2022 semester. Since this was our first time tackling the Maya software, it was required that we use free-to-use outside resources, meaning we did not create our own rigs and 3D models. Some simple assets such as the environment terrain, distant mountains and the bone were created by me, but others such as the giant tree, cacti, and palm trees were acquired from Turbosquid.

Film Process:
It began with us pitching our ideas to our professor through concept sketches and a couple sentence-long summaries. Once it got approved, we had to get straight to collecting our rigs and seeing if they're suitable for the assignment (making sure the controls work, that the geometry won't clip through itself, etc) and some of us began building our sets using what we've learned in our other classes to our best ability. I was among the few who decided to create a story environment that took place completely outdoors so that was intriguing to explore. I got to the 2D storyboarding part and got a wakeup call to how ambitious this truly was for a first semester film. I learned to compartmentalize what I had to make the process easier on myself without taking away anything from the overarching story or characterization. Basically everything went wrong when I decided "psh, I don't need to REDO my storyboards I'll figure it out without it". So yeah actually getting to the part where I animate the characters was difficult considering I got stuck at "how do I present this properly?" Over that time-period I worked on some animated shots out of order - taking what I knew did work and getting that out of the way first. These are the pieces of animation that flow the best in this film as I spent the most time on them; the takeoff flight and picking up the bone/preparing to throw it. The other part I spent the most time on was the first couple shots of the vulture gnawing on the bone, as I struggled positioning the rig to perform the task. I would've liked for it to be better but I had to move on with what progress I had if I wanted to finish the film on time. I was feeling pretty hopeless (frankly still am) as the semester was drawing to a close, thinking there'd be no way in hell I'm finishing this on time, but with the help and support of those around encouraging me, it helped me give that final push to complete this. Overall there is so much more I could've done to make this better had I utilized my time better, but I'm happy to at least have finished. Next semester I'll be doing this all over again, except this time I'll have to build everything myself including the rigs. I'll probably go get a head start on those over the break.

All credits are in the video itself, however if you have any questions please feel free to shoot me a message in the comments section! I read all my messages and I'd be more than happy to respond! I know I explained my process in the giant paragraph above but if you want me to make a separate video showcasing everything I made over the 15-week timeframe of the semester, let me know! Until next time, packmates!