Ellen Pu Portfolio - Senior Capstone

Background

Case 09 is a four-month long project I completed for my senior capstone. It is a six minute animated short film that was the result of me wondering: "what if the people I see acting in those insurance commercials are actually folks who owe the corporations a lot of money?" Due to the limited time I had for this project, I needed to get creative when it comes both my production schedule and my deliverables. Everything that I didn't credit to an individual or a corporate entity is done by me.

Story

Actor 184 thought it was going to be just another normal day on set when suddenly one of the crewbots (production crew robots) got hacked. He heard a voice through that hacked bot implying that he had been brainwashed and that the life he's living now is fabricated. At first, he brushed this encounter off as a joke. However, he couldn't shake off the feeling that something is not quite right.

Pre-Production

The pre-production for the film was done in about a month.

This is the full animatic I created out of my storyboard frames. Due to the time constraints for this project, I decided to limit the amount of character animation to be used in the short.

These are some of the original sketches I have of the characters featured in the film. Originally, I was going to have the director wear a mask to add to the anonymity of the character, but I decided at the last minute to give the director a more approachable appearance.

This is the original turnaround I created as a reference for my modeler. The character design is inspired by a reoccurring character featured in an insurance commercial.

These are the robots featured in the short film. While the designs for both the "Charging Bot" and the "Security Bot" are original, the "Crew Bot" design was pulled from Turbosquid.

Production

Actor 184's (Jon Snyder) animation rig

Model created by Megan Stewart

Rig created by Gaurav Garg

Charging Bot model created by me

Crew Bot model pulled from TurboSquid

Security Bot model created by me

Live-Action Filming for "the Director"

The director is characterized to be a "Big Brother" sort of person. I decided that the best way to sell such an image is to simply have them sit in front of a camera in formal clothing while coldly delivering their orders. The idea was that the character is in a remote work environment similar to what we're experiencing now. The videographer for this shoot is Adan Morales.

Photo taken by Adan Morales

Building the Environment

Environment thumbnail sketches created by me as a reference to the final environment paintings

Environmental concept art by Annie Wu

These were used as a reference to the actual environments featured in the film. The final environments were the result of me pulling some of assets from Turbosquid while modeling the rest of the assets.

Illustrations featured on the bulletin board inside Jon's bedroom. All of these are drawn by me.

Animation Process

I did all of the animations for the short film. As the actor for Jon Snyder was recording his lines, I decided that it was a good idea have him as the animation reference for the character.

Reference

Blocking

Splining

Final

UX/UI Design

One of the scenes in Case 09 features Jon Snyder diving down an internet rabbit hole in hopes of discovering the truth behind his identity. The idea was that the world featured in the film wasn't so different than the world we currently live in. Therefore, the desktop Snyder uses looks similar to a Windows desktop and the articles he reads is formatted like the articles on Medium.com.

UX/UI concept sketches of the webpages featured in the film

Desktop base design. Everything besides the background and the Opera logo was created by me.

Jon's scheduling app

VPN window 1

VPN window 2. The globe illustration is designed by freepik.com.

Jon Snyder's profile on a social media app. All of the icons featured here are designed by freepik.com.

The search engine Jon uses

An article featuring a car accident

An article about the company Jon works for

Post-Production

When it comes to the post-production for Case 09, I edited as I went along due to the four-month time constraint. All of the VFX and SFX were pulled from soundideas.sourceaudio.com and productioncrate.com. All of the music featured in the film are from productioncrate.com.