Making of TrashMan!
04_DaVinci_TrashMan.movAcknowledgement
Before we dive into the breakdown, I'd like to thank Nick Kondo, Srujith Kumar, and all my friends and colleagues whose guidance, feedback, and support played a significant role in shaping this portfolio piece and enhancing my skills as an artist.
The rigs are provided by the Animation Mentor and ideation of the shot was done through Cartoony Workshop.
Inspiration
The spark behind this piece goes back to a visit to a temple in India. It's customary for visitors to receive food offerings in leaf-made take-out cups. As I observed the temple grounds, I came across an elderly gentleman's unconventional approach to dealing with trash. Instead of making multiple trips emptying the trash bins, he tried to put his legs in and compress all that trash to make more space in the bins.
It made me ponder on how to turn the mundane task of picking trash into something interesting. I drew inspiration from this experience during the planning week of the cartoony workshop.
Planning
Software: Blender's Grease Pencil.
A handy tool to quickly draw and get ideas onto an animatic and a few Masterstudies. My primary objective was to traverse the character seamlessly from location to location using unique cartoony zip movements, strategically placing key actions at rule-of-thirds intersections to capture the audience's attention.
I explored different types of spins keeping in mind a ball bounce and ways to have the character not walk in the scene.
01_Planning_TrashMan0001-0436.mov02_Layout_TrashMan0001-0265.movLayout
I've had a ton of notes on the layout, thanks to some awesome feedback from my mentor. I decided to mix up Animation Mentor's rigs, Stewart and Stan, to create a character that's got a fun Johnny Bravo vibe to it. Did some quick animation tests to lock the flow and style.
The setting of the shot has a clearly defined background, midground, and foreground, and elements placed at different rule-of-thirds. The character gradually follows these lines of action and moves towards the camera.
Splocking (Blocking + Splining)
Software: Maya
After getting green-lit on the layout and the rig, I jumped into Maya to get ideas across. Being cartoony in nature, I went with pose holds and animating in spline to get the flow thanks to strong planning.
It's a culmination of discussing with the community that gave rise to cool elements like the debris flying up, stuffing of trash can, whistling the truck and him being heroic and dragging at the start.
03_Splocking_TrashMan0001-0730.movPolish
Software: Maya
There are a lot of things that went into polishing this shot which added that extra appeal to the shot.
Using AnimPolish's sculpt tool to shape out each pose and sometimes each frame of the shot.
Adding Rhythm for the timing beats. The slam in the air has 1-1-pause-1 while the kicks in the bin have 1-pause-1-1. Pushing all the holds and highs of the character by more frames added impact for the faster movements accompanying it.
3D Smears and multiples throughout the shots helped bridge the high-spacing gaps and sound to help sell the beats.
00_FINAL.mp4