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title : Cybird

length : 4.24 minutes

category : montage

director : M. F. Kamil A. Fauzi

team members : Syed Hidayat, Muhammad Ridhuwan, Muhamad Haidhar

software : 3d Studio MAX, Adobe Photoshop, Ulead Media Studio

designed for : Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Kuala Kubu Bharu

special thanks to : Puan Khadisah bt Awang, Puan Zuraidah bt Arbaie,

En Ahmad Fauzi b. Mohd Zin, En Syed Hassan b. Syed Mohammad, En Rosli Jamaluddin

release date : July 2002

 
 

Cybird was actually my first complete short animation  that I made when I was still a school student. Technically at that time, I'm not that good in 3D Studio MAX especially at using a bone structure. When I got this project from my school (SMK Kuala Kubu Bharu) they informed me that the animation is for the school's website introduction, so in my mind I thought that I must create a short, small size and low resolution animation to get smooth video playback when it goes online. But after they changed the idea for an animation of school intro/montage, I came out with a new idea = 'a bird flying in my school'

     

 

The project begins

 

With a group of four, we divided our work. My friends took photos of every angle of the school while I created the Cybird model in 3D Studio MAX. After a week, the Cybird model completed and it finally appeared in a robot design. The robotic character was made because I feel more comfortable doing the mechanical stuff and it is easy than making a real-look bird which has an organic shape. The mechanical character that I have designed is a segmented objects and it is separated in every part of the body. And the reasons are; easy to setup and move...

 

 

Modelling

 

After that, we start discussing on how the story should going and we also agreed to put some fantasy elements like the flying/hover island in the sky. I sketched a simple storyboard for our guidance to see what objects and scenes that required in the animation.

 

              

*click on thumbnail to enlarge

 

As soon as the storyboard finished, we start modeling all the school buildings base on the photos we already taken. Probably creating the school model is the most challenging task for us. I'd never pictured how hard would be trying to re-create full digital school area complete with it environments. We created the models part by part and this process has taken about a month to complete. We also make our school badge in 3d with animated fire.

 

 

Animating Cybird

 

Storyboard has been draw, Cybird model is now animateable, and the complex school model also was done. Now we are ready to animate. I like this part (animate in 3d) because it's not as hard as animate a 2d animation where we must draw frame by frame to complete a sequence of animation. In 3d we just 'push and pull' or 'put and place' the object to the position we want and it will automatically moving and complete the entire frames. But the problem at that time is I'm not good to create and animate the bone structure for Cybird model especially for it's legs. You can see at the first scene, the legs are not very well grip to the tree, keep moving and jerky. In the other scene where Cybird landing on the building roof, I just keep prevent the camera from showing the legs when close-up.

 

Rendering and finishing

 

Rendering process took about 3 weeks to finish since my computer at that time is not as good as today's computer. After the rendering process completed, we used Ulead Media Studio to compose all of the scenes with audio. For the background music, we used one of the Sydney Game Soundtracks as the Cybird theme.

 

- This Cybird animation took about 4 months to finish