Curiosity Killed the Train (Project 4)

"A motion path animation about a train's curiosity."

Written Description

1. Our protagonist, Train, ambles slowly through the forest, greeting the cute bunnies.

2. Train reaches a broken fence with a Do Not Enter sign. He pauses momentarily to consider whether to trespass or not. Eh, why not? Curiosity gets the best of him.

3. A decaying forest is the first sight that Train encounters after leaving safety. A bit ominous... but whatever. He chooses to go on.

4. The next sight on Train's journey is a cemetery. What's up with that?!

5. Train then passes by the Grim Reaper, a cauldron, and a bunch of spiders and voodoo dolls. Despite all signs telling him to turn back, Train goes on.

6. Train arrives upon the last sight: a train wreckage. :O! Debris and skulls are everywhere; his fellow trains are overturned. Train now realizes that, like these other trains, he will soon meet an unfortunate fate. You could say he has reached his final destination... literally and metaphorically.

Storyboard

Principles of Animation

1. Ease in and out - Train does not launch into the scene at a high speed; rather, he starts off slow, varies his speed throughout the journey, and slows down again at the end, which is a more "natural" way for him move. When Train approaches a new sight (like a cemetary), he reduces his speed, which allows the audience to absorb what Train is seeing. On this journey, it is important that Train's speed is not constant. Below are some pictures of where Train moves slowly before picking up speed later.

2. Arcs - Train follows a track that has a curved trajectory. A straight track would not be as engaging for the audience. Below are some pictures of the curved tracks.

3. Anticipation - Train encounters various sights that keep hinting at death in increasingly concerning levels, building up the audience's anticipation of what will happen at the end of the tracks. Each sight is a new level of spooky (from a decaying forest to a cemetery to the literal Grim Reaper), which encourages the audience to anticipate Train's discovery of the train wreckage, a symbol of his ultimate end. Below is a picture of the first "hint" of Train's unfortunate end, a Do Not Enter sign, and also a picture of the anticipated destination, the train wreckage.

Animation

Notes: I created the train tracks, grass plane, night sky dome, and animated the motion path of the camera. I obtained models for the rest of the scene from turbosquid.com and free3d.com and assembled the various objects to create my vision.

Challenges: The challenges of this project was wrapping the train tracks to the path curve and working with the graph editor on the motion path to vary the speed of the camera. I also faced difficulties with rendering in high quality, since I usually render on the school's Mac computers for the best quality (Maya crashes when I try to produce 720p or 1080p playblasts on my personal laptop). I solved these problems, but it was very time consuming!

Future considerations: If I had more time, I would like to add sound effects to bring this animation to life, adjust the lighting and shadows so that it would appear darker, and perhaps explore more interesting curve paths (like ones with loops or drops).

Thank you for watching! :)