The Making of Cricket:
Breaking Down a Digital Character Animation Student Film

Ben Stern came to the Digital Character Animation program with a little CG experience and a longtime love of acting. "When I was introduced to CG, I immediately saw how my acting experience could come into play in animation," he says.

In his six months in DCA, followed by a two-month extension on a Festival Scholarship, Ben made Cricket. "Ben was a dedicated student," explains Senior Instructor Greg Berridge . "He wanted to see his film made no matter what obstacles arose. The film draws you into a world, tells you a tale, and pleases you by its ending. It has all of the features of good visual storytelling."

Let's start with the end result: Ben Stern's madcap Cricket.

What does it take to make a film like Cricket? Ben walks us through the process:

The Concept | The Setup | The Animation | The Finish | Exceeding Expectations

The Concept

From the first week of the program, students begin thinking about the story and design of their film. In fact, Cricket wasn't Ben's first concept. He'd been moving along with a different story before a bolt of inspiration changed everything. "It was a daydream that unfolded almost seamlessly, and was accurate down to 90 percent of the shots that I ended up doing," Ben says. A shortened pre-production phase was his first hurdle.

That doesn't mean he ignored those crucial early steps, like the design of the characters. "Ichiro was supposed to be cute, and approachable, slightly doll- and infant-like," Ben explains. "Large head and eyes, small stature, and so forth."

Likewise, the overall look was something Ben had to consider early because it would be informing the project almost every step of the way. "The cartoon-meets-reality style of CG is something I have always wanted to do. Hard edges, low-poly, high texture."

The Setup: Modeling, Texturing & Rigging

Before the animation can begin, designs must first be translated into practical, production-ready assets like 3D models and surface textures. That means using Autodesk Maya, the industry-leading software at the centre of the DCA curriculum.

"I really wanted the film to have a graphic punch to it," he says. "The approach was to keep geometry as basic as possible and let the textures do as much of the work as possible."

Everything you see in the film - from characters to buildings to props - first had to be modeled in three dimensions. "What I would do is make a simple sketch of the object I wanted to create and then proceeded to create its 3D counterpart."

Rigging involves using Maya to set up a model's 'skeleton' - bones and moving joints - for the animator to manipulate. With the help of fellow student Abhijit Roy, Ben created working rigs.

The Animation

Character animation: the heart and soul of DCA. With a story written, a world and its characters designed, textures created, and assets modeled and rigged, it's finally time to bring it all to life. The process begins with rough animatics showing broad actions and movement.

"Initially, I posed the characters in the three key poses of that specific shot," Ben says. "It should be fairly easy to convey what the character is doing in several key poses, both in terms of readability and to connect the poses later on."

"After I had those, I would create the in-between poses and start smoothing out the animation into semi-fluid motion, which would become my first pass."

The Finish

After all the animation is complete, the rendering process takes all that 3D data and turns it, frame by frame, into the polished images that make the film.

Finally, animators collaborate with students in the Sound Design for Visual Media program to add a soundtrack to their films. Since Cricket has almost no dialogue, the sound design had to perfectly complement the onscreen action and be able to help carry the story.

"The guys would get my animatics and would proceed to making the sound scheme, after which we would meet and discuss what changes had to be done," Ben says. "The idea behind the entire soundscape for the film was to get it to sound as epic as we could make it, and I think the guys did a terrific job in achieving that."

Exceeding Expectations

From its appealing design to its fluid animation and frenzied pace, Cricket is a success by any standard. "Ben's film is good because it encompasses all of the areas that we teach in the DCA program," Greg says. "He was able to leverage knowledge that he had obtained prior to coming to the school with the skills he learned in the program."

"He wanted to see his film made no matter what obstacles arose. He succeeded, in my opinion, and went beyond many expectations - I think even his own."

Says Ben: "Overall, the process was a lot of fun."

Find out more about what you will learn in the 6-month Digital Character Animation program.