MakeItFly2024Submission

For my submission, I animated the notorious IKEA shark or, Blahaj, majestically flying, or well... trying to. I used Maya to animate my submission. I included playblasts in each step for easy viewing as the project progresses toward completion.

For my animation, I used a model that I created as a personal project in the past. I created the model using Maya and used Substance Painter to texture the shark and the box containing these adorable plushies. For 2D graphics, I used Clip Studio Paint.

In this step, I imported my rig and just familiarized myself with the controls as this was the first rig that I had created. I started by changing the position of the whole shark throughout the air to get a general gist of how I wanted the pacing of this animation to look. Then, I started by animating the body of the shark, using the principles of follow-through and overlapping to get a more natural look at the shark while "swimming" through the air. Next, I animated the fins of the shark as it was falling to make it look like it was flapping. I liked this idea as it gave the shark some goofy personality. I also wanted this animation to loop, but the starting and end positions of the shark were different. To combat this, I animated the camera to follow the shark to make it look seamless. Animating the camera made the shark jumping out and flying more dynamic too.

In this step, I liked how the main shark was animated, and so I went on to texture everything else to make the scene more cohesive. I fixed the animation of the camera so that the shark fit into the frame at all times. I then added some lighting, specifically the spotlight. I liked the spotlight as it made the shark seem like it was performing a circus stunt. I then added other sharks in the boxes to make it look like the actual containers in IKEA that hold these stuffed animals. I then animated these side sharks for secondary action.

For my final touches on this project, I adjusted the speed of how the shark came out of the water as it felt way too linear throughout the entire time the shark flew through the air. I also fixed the shadows in my project by adding a directional light. This fixed the pixelated shadows I was getting in my earlier steps. I then rendered my animation using Maya Hardware 2.0 and used Premier Pro to piece these frames together and add some silly sound effects.