Pacman Test

I wanted to start by creating a simple character that was 3D printed, the idea was to create a seperate pacman for the different in betweens in a pacman cycle to then use stop motion animation to bring him alive and to create a simple set in Maya to show an example of hybrid animation to better understand the direction in which to take my hybridity chapter. here are two examples of photographing the 3D prints:

 These were taken using a rostrum camera and I used an outline of the closed pac to place the others, if I were to re-visit the test I would have fashioned a wooden template with a circular template indented into the piece for a more accurate placing of the pac's. also the lighting rig cast some harsh shadows but were easily sorted in post-production. here is the sequence:

Due to the nature of my dissertation I needed to primarily explore the hybridity of animation and there were various problems I encountered, here was a render of the set that was the first test:

Trying to keep with the pacman style of top down game made the whole set very washed out and bright so I decided to try a different angle

This looked a lot better but this also meant I would have to photograph the 3D prints at the same angle:

This became too difficult as I didn't have the right equipment to replicate the angles of the 3D set. this experiment showed how precise one has to be to achieve a hybrid animation where all the angles are the same to avoid any unwanted aesthetic differences. in this case it seemed like too much effort to use stop-motion for the character of pacman as it could be easily replicated in Maya with no noticeable differences which instructed me that in some cases it would be more prudent to use one method alone, in this case it would have been better as either purely stop motion or purely CGI. so hybrid animation is not always the most efficient method which contributes to my research report as there is the underlying notion that CGI could overtake stop-motion, we need to further explore where stop-motion cannot be overtaken or replaced, or where stop-motion is the most appropriate method to use.