Art Production Bible

Elicia Sarmiento
Story Synopsis:
The working title of your movie: A Loving Thief in Kuvattma

An elevator pitch of your movie: Did he steal your money or your heart?

The central idea of your movie: A thief sorcerer who lost everything as a kid starts a new life in a new
country called Kuvattma.

A synopsis of your movie. Your synopsis should include :

● A beginning: Starting with Nix’s casual routine of stealing and keeping on a good attitude.
Goes on different missions for himself and steals from the rich in order to survive.
● A middle: You eventually get to see why he’s like the way he is: distrusting, greedy, and
narcissistic. What he does doesn’t really make him happy anymore. “People don’t deserve
what they have, so why should I?” You find out that he is mourning his Mom’s death. (His
Bestfriend) His hatred towards people with authority comes from the Captain of the Rilan
Guard who killed Nix’s Mother.
● An end: Actions have consequences! Nix ends up getting a chance by the Dream Goddess,
Lillia. In order to get his mom back, he has to get out of all of the things he has done in the
past to get his mom back.

Create a character profile for your main character, Your profile must include:

● Name: Nix (Narkiss) Cazmier

● Description: (29) A romantic thief, Half tiefling/Half swiftstride shifter, 6’11, navy blue
skin, brown eyes, Jaguar prints.
● Desires: Gold, Jewelry, suffering to authority
● Habits: Greedy, Germaphobe (Hand washing and needs to be clean), Hair and Face need to
look stunning 25/8, and runs away from his problems.
● Traits: Charming, Egotistical, Selfish, and Independent
● Personal Details: A Conman/artist! From Rila, traveled to Kuvattma after traumatic
experiences.
● Goals & ambitions: Justice, to be happy, learning to trust other people and work with
others.

Describe the setting and world of your story.

Inspired by Dungeons and Dragons races and medieval setting, there is a whole world named Lucid.
There are more countries but the two that are focused are Rila and Kuvattma. Rila is inspired by a very
vibrant cottagecore aesthetic and everyone speaks common, or Rilan. Kuvattma is more with asian
cultural aesthetic and architecture mixed with pacific islander culture and the language is Kuvano.

To let our imaginations run wild, our first assignment introduced us to story synopsis,
or the beginning of creating in a production. Descriptions of the story’s setting,
characters, and summary of the movie’s plot are the most important things to note when
narrowing down the future steps of the animation production.
Storyboard:

After details of the story are developed through writing, beginning the sketching is one
of the next principles in creating a film. It’s a quick way to visualize the action and how
the production team communicates how they want to depict the scenes of the film. In
the theme of my setting, Nix, a character inspired by D&D, is portrayed in my
storyboard, “A Very Easy Escape”.
Thumbnail Sketches:

Just like characters and their settings, props are a big aspect of creating a world for
films/games. The assignment required us to make thumbnail sketches, or simple
sketches that help give multiple visuals of the same object to see which design fits best
for what it will be utilized. A big prop used in my film was a Bag of Holding, which
required multiple bag designs to find the right one.
Camera Shots:

Our first intro to the popular professional program, Maya, was an assignment that
practiced using different camera angles. When downloading a figure in Maya, we were
able to experiment with the posture of the figure to frame it how we wanted. Some of my
favorite shots that I took inspiration from movies and films are the medium shot, the
close-up, and the worm’s eye view to which all practiced the rule of thirds.
3D Modeling:

Once we got settled with our first Maya assignment, our next step in the process was
modeling. We learned many of the tools you could use when creating things on a 3D
surface, or an x, y, and z axis. We started from importing shapes, such as squares,
cylinders, and spheres until we ended up molding them into a hat for a robot! I chose a
sun hat to challenge myself with curves and hard edges.
Texturing:

In the texturing assignment, we learned how to assign new materials to make a variety
of different textures on different objects. Changing the floor layer and the image inside
the Shaderball to have the texture of an imported image. Afterwards, we went into
Arnold settings to create the surface of the shaderballs from assigning shader and if we
wanted the ball to be transparent, shiny, metallic, glossy, etc.
Rigging:

Next in production is Rigging. Rigging is the process of making characters and objects
move the way they’re supposed to by putting in and adjusting any joints needed in order
to bring the character or object to the animators in the animation phase. Our
assignment was to rig a cylinder so the joints are easy to move. When you move them,
the joints act as a spine, so the cylinder would bend however you want instead of being a
stiff shape!
Best Frames of Animated Ball Bounce:

The animation assignment was a classic bouncing ball, however, students put their own
twist to how they wanted the ball to fall in action. My animation lasted 4 seconds as I
practiced the 12 principles of animation. Giving the ball gravity while it loses its bounce
overtime was practicing step 4: easing in and easing out, as the ball doesn’t come to a
full complete stop. The two photos show the exaggerated stretch of the ball when it’s just
about to start falling and squashing when it hits the ground.
VFX:

One of the easiest game changers of 3D animation versus 2D animation is VFX. With a
click of a few buttons, the ball broke the wall into as many pieces as we wanted the wall
to break using a Particle Simulation System in Maya. Another simulation we
experimented with was Soft-Body Simulation, which allowed our flag to look like fabric
and have all the creases, making it flow smoothly.
Lighting:

Lighting is one of the final steps that should be accounted for in any piece of artwork. It
alters the mood of what the artist is trying to depict instead of the audience trying to
guess how they’re supposed to feel in certain scenes/illustrations. This lighting took
inspiration from the Overwatch Animated Short, “Dragons”.
Rendering:

Using Arnold Renderer, the program's default render view is the above image. After
rehearsing how to change color on the car, we wanted to get rid of the noise to make a
more clear, hard-edged version of the car while keeping the same lighting, position, and
surface material.
Composite:

After rendering and setting composition for our Shaderballs in Maya, giving our Adobe
Creative Cloud an add-on to export Maya's layers of AOEs into Photoshop. Using “.exr”,
every layer was exported so that they could be adjusted with the adjustment “levels” to
help make accurate perspective blur, shading, and lighting into the image.
3D Logo:

Lastly, the “type” tool was used to create 3D text as we used the same skills as what was
required for Composite to make our own Logo! I grabbed an artwork I made to give a
design in the background that matches the colors I wanted to use. Once deciding the
font, the surface materials, and the AOEs, I transported the layers into Photoshop. My
goal was to have the Logo pop out, especially because the background was the same
colors of the Logo.