Dancer by the Sea

Once upon a time, there lived an old woman…

UW Computer Animation Capstone 2015-2017

When I was at the UW, myself and around 25 classmates simultaneously learned computer animation fundamentals and created a 9 minute short film as part of a computer animation capstone. This was a passion project to say the least. After we had worked tirelessly for a little over a year (summer of 2015- spring 2016), I volunteered my time to polish the film so that it could eventually be ready for the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF). Of course I couldn’t do this alone and luckily around 7-8 of us combined our skill sets to finalize the film (2016-2017). Our beautiful film premiered at SIFF in May of 2019. The trailer can be found here: https://arl.cs.washington.edu/films/dancer_trailer/

To polish a film means to refine and perfect it. We wanted a cohesive look and feel that we couldn’t quite achieve in the 1 year timeframe that the capstone consisted of. Also, there was always work to be done improving the motion since we were all beginners with both animating and the animation software itself (curse you Maya!). My role for polishing was to be in charge of re-rendering shots. Which means that, whenever something in the shot was changed, whether it was motion, or a different texture, or anything, it needed to be redone so that the changes would be included in the rendermatic. I singlehandedly re-rendered the whole film at least 4 times over by the time we were through. On top of that, I was editing and remaking textures, organizing the group as a student producer, and I even touched up the motion on a few shots here an there. Whatever it takes, as we said during the project.

Polish Comparisons: 2016 vs 2017

The texture of the walls was something we needed to change throughout the film for polish. We were going for a watercolor/painterly feel, but there was just too much graininess with what we had. We needed less watercolor paper texture, more painterly brushstrokes.

We were also still learning how to texture models at the same time so we revised Grace’s (our main character!) textures while we were polishing. The end result is much warmer and inviting. Shoutout to Jade Wu who created the concept art for Grace and also created her painterly shaders!

Here are some other fun before and afters:

Overall, I’m just so extremely proud of our team and grateful for this opportunity. By no means was this an easy project. Many sleep deprived nights were spent, some tears were shed, but I think I can speak for all of us when I say that the amount of pride we have for our film is insurmountable.

Alright, here’s a few more, I just can’t resist!

I just love this film so much. Truly, thank you to the whole team.