AXONEME STUDIOS
Handcrafted Medical Animations
Concept Art
At the outset of a project, it may be useful to experiment with color palletes, shapes and patterns and character design (even if the characters are cells and molecules).
This will assure that the animation visuals adhere to a brand identity or fit in with what a client is imagining for the final product.
This step is not necessary if the look and feel is already determined going into the project.
Storyboard
This step is essential, no matter the scope of the animation or any assumption about how much of the narrative has been determined prior to commencing.
If making an animation is building a house (and it can be that complex), the storyboard is a blueprint.
The storyboard stage is the perfect time to make changes to the animation that will fulfill a client’s vision, strip away unneeded scenes or add imagery that will make the animation more understandable. At the end of the project, at the moment of final render, not so much.
Animatic
In some instances, the still images contained in a storyboard aren’t sufficient to convey the the motion planned for the animation. Taking the drawings from the storyboard and extrapolating them into simple animations can be helpful here.
Even simple 2D animation takes time to build, so this step is only included when necessary.
Rough Draft to Final Animation
Everything you see in the animation has to be built. However, that’s just the beginning because at that point, it is simply an elegant digital sculpture.
The next step is to add internal ‘bones’ that the different parts of the sculpture can be attached to and then program controls that determine how these different parts move.
The internal panels on the left with the scrolling values and blinking pink and red squares show the keyframes recorded in the controls that help create the walking motion of the figure.
There are a number of differences between the visual appearance of the rough draft on the left and the final render on the right.
The rough draft models are a more simplified shape and lacking color and texture. That’s because these are painted and sculpted, sometimes in other software, and added at the point of render.
Some objects in the rough draft only appear as boxes because they are stand-ins that, like the complex colors and textures, will be made visible only when rendered. This cuts down on scene size and prevents the file from freezing up.
There are many ways to move things around in an animation. The objects that emit from the open DNA are particles controlled en masse by a physics system – that way they don’t have to be steered manually on an individual basis.
The DNA strand is threaded onto an invisible curve that can be animated into different shapes by moving the connected ‘cluster’ deformers. (You can see these if you squint – they’re the tiny green ‘C’s).
Additional elements, like the chatty cartoon DNA character, can be added during the post-production phase.
After the animation has been rendered out, a voiceover, music and sound effects can be added. It can also be delivered without these, for times when a client prefers to narrate the action during a live presentation. It is helpful to know from early in the process if a voiceover will be needed so that the animation timing can be built around it.
Gallery
