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Character Animator

Animation process and technical details

Personal projects hold a special significance for me. While working on the Disney Little Mermaid film animations, I had many scenes set underwater. I wanted to enhance the soft timing brought by the water with keyframe 2D effects. So, this film served as an inspiration for this project. The water effects during the moment the girl falls into the water were a good idea for this. Of course, there had to be a reason for the girl to fall into the water, so I can say I added all the fight scenes just for the girl to fall into the water. That's how the story shaped up."

The character designs actually date back a few years. When I wanted to create and animate my own story, I wanted to use characters I would design. Ecem was very helpful in this regard; we worked together to bring the characters to life, including the environment we created to tell the story in its simplest form.

Since I had a full-time job while working on the project, In total, it took a year and a half intermittently, but if we consider working hours, the animation took 3 months.. I used TV Paint for 2D effects, and I drew each frame individually, it took about the same amount of time. I can't actually call the animation final; even though Ecem and I are trying to salvage it by doing shot sculpting, there are many spacing and overlapping issues. But overall, I think the poses and timings convey the story.

Character rigs developed specifically for this project were prepared to include areas where characters needed to move for the animation to be more dynamic. Since there was no acting on the stage, we didn't spend much time on facial expressions rigs. Ecem's beautiful blend shapes compensated for this. Jordi created the man character's rig very quickly. Görkem prepared the basic rig for the girl character, and Mohammed quickly addressed the shortcomings of the girl and the fox.

I created the scene as a single shot without adding camera cuts. I believe trying to capture the right poses with camera movement is more valuable. The lens sometimes varies between close to the human eye or between 28-35mm for depth. The camera has a special rig I made to rotate around the boat. I tried to add animation whenever the rig allowed, to make the action feel more intense with camera shakes and supportive boat rocking.

I generally don't use constraints in interactive scenes; in this project, only the characters' layout controllers are constrained to the boat. Every movement, including interactions between characters, is keyframed.

I didn't consider adding sound to the project until the last moment, so I created the animation timing without sound. Deniz Can designed the sound and music for the animation, and we worked together to finalize it. Later, I made small adjustments in the animation for mouth and motion synchronization.

Using references when animating is an essential need, as everyone knows, to achieve perfect realism. But for me, forcing myself to extract the movement from my imagination and capturing the movement exactly as I envisioned it is much more valuable and exciting. So, I didn't use any references for this project.

I took the project as a Maya playblast output without lighting. I always imagined the scene as rainy, under the spotlight of the boat, with 2D-effect droplets falling from the characters. Of course, since it will take time to realize these thoughts, I am postponing them to an unknown date...

I hope you enjoyed watching it. I will share the animation production process at the first opportunity. Thank you for taking the time to read.

Filmography