My goal this year is to challenge myself to a new creative project every month. I thought it would be an interesting challenge to re-create the classic "Steam Boat Willie" movie in 3D. I decided to only take on the first 60 seconds of the animation.
One of Disney's first films "Steamboat Willie (1928)
Modeling
First things first, I had to model the assets. I modeled the steamboat from scratch using primitive shapes. I wasn't looking for an exact 1 to 1 comparison, but just wanted to capture the spirit of the steamboat. I used Cinema 4D's landscape feature to make the mountains, and animated noise shaders to make the water move. I then animated the entire backdrop instead of the ship to make it appear as if the ship was moving.
Rigging
I knew the success of this project hinged on the "Willie" character. I opted to buy the character for 15 bucks on CGTrader to streamline the process. After I brought the character into Cinema 4D, I noticed that the meshes on his fingers and shoes were connecting. I also noticed that his shoulders were too close to his head. All of these issues would have caused major problems in the rigging process, so I corrected the issues and exported the character to be rigged into a 3rd party program. Instead of rigging the character's skeleton from scratch, I used the website Maximo. Mixamo is a website that automatically rigs characters and gives you a library of motion capture data to use. I decided to get the base skeleton from Mixamo, but opted to hand animate "Willie" from scratch.
WEIGHT PAiNTING
I fixed any weighing issues by painting influencing weights on "Willie's" joints and then proceeded to parent controllers to his skeleton.
POSE MORPHS
I then began to create pose morphs for "Willie's" mouth and eyes. I knew the whistling was going to be an issue since the character's mouth was wide open. I did my best to sculpt his mouth shut and give his eyes the squitting/happy look.
WILLIE ANIMATION
Then I began the grueling process of hand animating "Willie".
FIVERr
I then went on Fiverr, and paid 13 bucks for someone to do the iconic whistling that "Steamboat Willie" is known for. I ended up not using it for the final render but used it as a guide for my animation.
The next step was modeling and hand-animating the steam engine characters and the smoke stacks. I used budge deformers and pose morphs to quickly accomplish the animation. I also created bone joints to create the leg motion that the steam engine character uses to kick the other steam engine character.
Steam ENGINE CHACTERS
The last challenge was to create the smoke coming out of the smokestacks of the ship. I used a particle emitter and played with the settings until I found something that fit my vision. I rendered it all out in Redshift, and added the final music and sound effects in Premiere Pro.
Final Result
I learned a lot from this project. I completed it in a week, and am pretty proud of the results. Now to the next project.
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