Making of

E4 Sting 2011
Animation

By Shahbir Abdul Hameed

11/05/2011

25/05/2011
 Introduction
The next project for my course is to produce an E4 animation for the E4 Sting
competition. For my Animation I thought of having the E4 Logo drawing on
the moon. This could be associated with 70’s Sci-Fi and Super Villains since
the animation has a science fiction feel to it as well as depicting the E4 Logo
as a Super Villain.
During this project I have developed some new animating skills, mostly bump
map animation. I have also learned about rigged an object that doesn’t have
any human proportions and model a laser.
E4 Brain Storm Ideas
 Research:
Mad Scientists

I researched some mad scientists to give me the idea of how

they act, look and mainly what type of poses they pull off.
 Research:
70’s Sci-Fi Laser Guns, Turrets,
Telescopes and Cliffs
Character Development
 E4 Character Model

Wire Frame and

Model, Rig and
Lattice
Controls
 Character Poses

I have drawn out some poses for the E4 Logo to

give me some idea of how it moves. I mostly
based them around the Mad Scientist research
because he is meant to represent them.
 Old Storyboard Concepts

While coming up
with some ideas
for my E4 Sting The second idea was to have a
animation, I character playing with a jack in a box,
but when the box opened it knocks out
thought up four the character with a stamp leaving the
The first idea was to have a
stories. Then I television showing different E4 logo on his forehead.
selected the story forms of the E4 logo and
ending with the default one.
that has more of
an impact than
the others.
The third idea was to
have four E4 logos
going down a water
slide ending with the
three at the back
falling out in a comical
fashion.
 Storyboard
The final storyboard is about
an E4 logo carving a huge E4
on the moon with a laser.

This idea had to be

fleshed out many
times until I settled on
how the laser would
move along the moon
surface.
 Laser Cannon Concept Art

I was designing different

types of nozzles for my Laser
Cannon until I settled on a
final design. I was going for a
generic laser cannon with a
hint of power, which is the
reason why the very end of
the nozzle is squared off.
Final Laser Cannon Design
E4 Laser
The laser is made out of two
cylinders, with one of the
cylinders in the other and
scaled slightly smaller and a
lot skinnier. The I gave them
both rampshaders making
the bigger cylinder red and
the skinnier cylinder white.
Then in the ramps made
them transparent, and
increassed the
incandescence to make the
colours stand out more.
Next I added the glow effect
on both the red and white
cylinder with the white
cylinder glow slightly lower
then the red cylinder. Finally
I parented the white cylinder
to the red cylinder so when
the red cylinder move the
white cylinder follows.
 Carve Animation:
Making the Bump Animation
I made the carve animation by turning the
E4 logo into a line picture by sending the
logo image to Photoshop and selecting
certain parts of the logo with the magic
wand tool and applying a black line
stroke by selecting the move tool and
right clicking the mouse button. While in
the stroke menu I set the pixel (PX) width
to 10 and click ok, by using this setting
the lines will come out thick. I then saved
the file as a JPEG naming it E4 Logo
Bump Map.
Next I opened After Effects and imported
Next I looked over my storyboard animatic to see
the E4 Logo Bump Map and added it to
how long the laser hit the moon and finishes,
the composition area. Next I edited the
which turns out the scene is roughly 5 seconds
composition frame setting to 250
long in frames that 150. I went back to After
frames(10 seconds) started masking out
Effects and edit the frame to 150 and shorten the
one of the lines in the time line by adding
mask animation. I then converted the
a white solid colour to be used as the
composition of the E4 logo and the mask as a
mask. I started animating the mask by
pre-comp so I can scale them down without the
setting two points a beginning point and
image becoming pixelated. Then I added the pre-
an end point while adding extra points
comp into the render area and opened the output
for the bends, then I animated the
module settings, changing the out as TIFF
beginning point moving all the way the
sequence and naming the save file
the end point making the line looking
E4_Bump_Animation_01.[00000]. Then I
like it is growing and moving from one
rendered it.
end to the other.
 Carve Animation:
Applying the texture
Next I created a plane and curved it manually. The plane is meant to
represent the moon’s surface.
Next I duplicated the plane and scaled slightly. I then assigned a new
lambert material to the second plane. I then click the checkered box
near and right click the file option and chose projection then I clicked
the arrow next to ‘image’ in the ‘projection attribute’.
Next I clicked on the little fold next to ‘image name’ under the ‘file
attribute’ and chose the E4 Bump map and ticked the ‘use image
sequence’, which will now animate the texture.
I did this two more times for ‘transparent’ and ‘bump mapping’.
Finally I re-size the projector by hitting ‘fit to group bbox’ under
‘place3dtexture’ attribute and rotate the projector. Also changing the
scale of the Y and X Axis until the texture sits just right.
On the first plane I just added a moon texture in the colour channel, I
did this to procedure on two more objects.
Unused Cliff Designs
Cliff Bumped and Unbumped

Here is a render comparison for my Cliff set between a bump (left image) and an
unbumped (right image) texture.
The reason for this is to see how much of a difference adding a bump texture to a
mesh, as we can see it adds a lot of detail to the model but it might take long to
render. An unbump texture may render fast and carries the strong colours but we
would not see much detail of the texture.
For the Future of the E4 Animation
For the future of this animation I will add some fixes to the
animation such as any animation, textures and lighting errors.
Adding an aura glow to the moon,. Add smoke effect to laser
cannon. Finally changing the colours of all the objects to match
with the colour pallets to the E4 Logo like the background
colours of the first two space scenes, the colours of the objects
like the moon and cliff as well as the Laser cannon and beam.