This was a couple-week-long assignment for the CAR 201 course at Syracuse University demonstrating different actions strung together using Ellie from Blender's free character rig assets, found here: https://studio.blender.org/characters/ellie/v1/ This project took around about 16 hours to complete from planning to final product.
I modeled the flashlight myself as well! I tried my best to fit it within the style of Ellie's model and materials, and I believe I achieved that! I rendered this animation in Blender using the EEVEE renderer, as I found the lighting and materials to be a bit more aesthetically pleasing when doing so. Below is the flashlight by itself and its light effect on a small piece of geometry!
My 2D animation style that I brought to animations like Another Tuesday Hike and DESOLATE were brought into this 3D project as well! I adapted my "true frame rate" workflow in 3D, which I haven't been able to show off too much before this project. I still went through blocking for 3D though, but for the in-betweens I gave myself leniency in feeling timings without regard to a specific frame rate. This makes movements feel more intentional and natural, letting me adjust movements and expressions of emotion with a better sense than I feel I can achieve with a static framerate. Some moments are animated on twos, while some are on fours, or even sixes! This also helps draw attention to specific or more complex actions and emphasizing them by using framerate to demonstrate extreme movement or even subtle movement. Below is the Blender window for my project, showing the frame breakdown for the animation and the flashlight animation breakdown! I also faked the character movement by moving the environment and camera as opposed to moving the rigged character!
