Chewing Sheep
For a computer graphics course I had to come up with a concept for a small animated short film and through that process get to know the open-source software Blender to create a very simple animation.
The story was simple with a young boy having eye contact with a sheep and then walking in front of a control panel with buttons and sliders. Playful as young boys are, he begins to push buttons and use the sliders not realizing that with those control panels, he changes the fabric of the sheep’s body. When the boy gets bored, he leaves the control panel and moves on and as we cut back to the sheep we realize that the sheep’s body is now made of stone and isn’t able to hold its position and due to its weight falls flat on the ground.
With that story in mind, I began to create a simple 3D Sheep within Blender out of basic 3D objects, like circles and tubes. Through further refinements of the sheep, like raising the resolution of the objects to smoothen the sheep a lot more or raising the floor in order to shorten the legs, the look of the sheep started to improve.
After watching more detailed video tutorials on Blender I started fresh with the sheep. I started to use the keyboard and the axis to have a more symmetrical correct sheep. I also improved the eyes and their eyelids and eyeballs and added movement of the eyeballs to make the sheep appear more alive and less static. And finally created real grass which raised the render time to an hour but gave the whole animation a much more real feeling.
The Link to the project page shows further videos, like the story reel or the very first animated sheep.