The final Trimester of my time at university was full of fast progress and rapid development in my skil and understanding of animation. 

I began with some finalisations of my storyboard that I drafted in December, which admittidly took longer than it should have. On the 3rd draft of the storyboard, I was content with the flow of the story, both visually and with the unfolding events. I had help from both Rory Waudby-Tolley and Lizzie Oxby in refining th story, keeping the focus on the main aspect of the short film - The Package. In some notes I wrote down, I told myself that there was no point in creating a short film that has a gag around the mystery of a package but never places any focus or tension on the item itself. Small pieces of realisation and also advice from my peers and tutors helped me in the end to produce a cohesive and satisfying stop-motion short film.

A lot of the short films production time was spent on set building and prop making. My peers were vastly ahead of me in terms of progress and I was getting anxious in my ability to finish before my deadline. In hindsight this feeling was misplaced as a good 80% of my term was spent on creating the physical world in which the film would be shot. Returning to the environment production, I hadn't completed many concept sketches, which didn't help my tutors understand the visual direction of the film. However, I had collected a mixed but focused series of moodboards to guide the vibe of the world design. I spent a small fortune buying various materials and items from my local B&Q and HobbyCraft. I also ordered a large bulk of styrofoam off the internet, which turned out to be double what I needed, now leaving me with a stock at the end of my bedroom. Some of the materials I purchased from my local shops were completely void of their end resemblance, others only took a few coats of paint to transform into another object entirely. I purchased a selection of metal piping that I turned into "piping" for the caves water system. My Dad wanted me to include a "Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing" gag in honour of Star Trek. So I painted on every pipe large enough the letters "GNDN" which adds a small easter egg for anyone watching the background of the film. As well as the piping, to give an industrial feel to the caves setting, I gathered kinding to imitate support beams, wires to pose as the caves electric system, foliage and small rocks to give the cave some life, and a hoard of random DIY bits that were painted and transformed into small vents, generators, large power cells and much more. I also purchased a small bag of cork grit. I  soaked it all in black paint water and as it was drying, sprayed it with gray primer. After leaving it out in the English sun for three days it was finally dry and I had the gravel flooring of the cave. 

3D printing bridged the project from being a complete "by hand" creation to a mixed medium project. The main focus of the story, besides "The Package", was the Courier. The Courier was designed as a resourceful individual who can complete the toughest of jobs. As a masked character, he had to have a compelling design that also could be fun to watch on a big screen. His design went through a huge swell of changes, some for the better and some that will not see the light of day ever again. I intended to have the design be sleek and metallic, in reflection of his spaceman/sci-fi nature, however, during the modelling process I found it both difficult to reach any resembling look to the sketched versions and for any end result I did come to, the model was abysmal. I was frustrated that my understanding of the modelling software was not reflected in the model. So with a weeks hiatus between restarting the helmet design, I had help and pointers from some peers. This proved invaluable to me improving the design to be more realistic in terms of the helmet feeling functional. The end product looked modular, hardy and comfortable. As well as the helmets design, I also modelled some gas tanks for the Courier to wear on his chest, some armour plating and most importantly, the package itself.

In addition to the models I created, one of my peers, Louie Hobbs, spent some of his free time designing some background props for my world. This included a munitions/utility crate, some large oil barrels, a gas-like barrel and some mining helmets.

In the meantime of the propbuilding, I was puting together a ship for the Courier. A janky freighter that mainly was inspired by UPS vans and also motorhomes from the USA. The design could have been improved but I was advised by many people to stop where I was as the ship had all of 15 seconds screen time. After painstakingly unwrapping the UVs of the model and importing grouped sections into Adobe Substance Painter, I added textures to the ship. I decided on a dark red colour scheme, reminiscent of Royal Mail. This colour scheme was complimented by general metal/chrome addons for highlights and armouring. After the mounting of textures back into Autodesk Maya, the ship was ready for animation. I rigged it to a simple flight path in a Skydome of stars and added two spheres in the direction the ship was flying. One being Jupiter, the other being one of Jupiter's moons - Ganymede. I had done some research into Ganymede ahead of the set-building for the sequence where originally we saw the Courier land his ship on the moon's surface and venture to the mouth of the cave. However time constraints and storyboard revisions cut this section entirely. Once this was rendered, I had my first complete shot of the production.

Set building. This proved the slowest part of the world building. It took more than a week to glue together and carve out all the various cave walls and arches that the Courier would traverse through. I had some help from my partner painting the sets once it had all been spray painted with primer. Lizzie Oxby advised I conduct material tests before any building. I took the advise in stride and used the chemical reaction from spraying styrofoam to mottle and disfigure the styrofoam to mimic the rocky texture of cave walls. The painting took a few days on and off to add layers of different grays and some muddy paints to the base of the walls. One of the most time consuming parts of this process was painting all the small holes in the styrofoam to avoid seeing small white patches on film. 

Once I had completed the 3D render, sets and props, it was down to painting the 3D printed props and building the Courier.

Backtracking a tad, all of the 3D modelled assets (apart from the freighter ship) were 3D printed with the help of Farzad Farzadnia. As the Future Labs technician, he helped me learn Bambu, a 3D printing software and also the art of 3D printing. It really isnt difficult, it was just the coolest part of my project. I completed several rounds of 3D printing, two of which prints were redone due to scaling against my armature. The longest print took just a bit longer than 9 hours and had to be left overnight. Once all of the printing was completed, I purchased a rotary tool and used its small nibs to sand the prints down to a smooth-ish finish. I wanted there to be some rough edges and polyagonal edges to some prints as the world in which I was building was meant to be imperfect and gritty, not polished. I spray painted all the prints with at least a gray primer, and the ones that needed it with a chrome spray. After letting everything dry, I painted the props with details. Mainly rust and dirt to fit in with the caves ambiance. Some of the props came out better than I had envisioned and also had the benefit of looking different from a new angle, so I could reuse props and have it look fresh each time.

With all of the sets pieces completed, I began to put it all together. I had a makeshift stop-motion stage given to me by one of my tutors. It was just an old wardrobe base from IKEA but it served its purpose perfectly. I also had measured wooden basplates for the sets that I placed on top of the stage. I drilled holes into the flooring for the Couriers path through each scene and marked out where props and cave walls would be placed. I then, with the help again of my partner, painted the floors of these baseplates a dark gray to avoid any light reflection during shooting. Although the "gravel" would be spread across the top of the baseplates I didnt want to cut any corners or give myself more work in post.

Finally, I build the Courier. I had already built the armature I ordered from animationsupplies.net (not a sponsor) and carried out some movement tests with. Those movement tests factored in a small detail of the characters design - joint access. The armature was super sensitive to how tight the joints were. Too tight and when I moved an arm, its entire torso turned with it. But too loose and its arm folded backwards into itself when I raised it up. When I built up the "flesh" of the armature, I kept the joints clear for screwdriver access during filming. 
I then created the Couriers jumpsuit from one of my partners old denim skirts. The rough material gave the perfect look and base for the rest of the details. I created two small gloves, a bandolier, pockets, a utility belt, radio and a neck warmer to bridge the body to the helmet. The final touch was the armour and helmet. I sewed the armour pieces onto the jumpsuit, which had been design with forethought with the inclusion of small loops to hold thread and be tied to the suit. I also included an old ring as an "emblem" of Galactic Express - the Courier's employer. When I added the helmet there was only one thing left, adding the tube from his gas tank to the nozzle mounted on the front of the helmet. I gutted a small wire and heated both ends around the plug I had 3D modelled to secure whatever I decided to use for the respiratory system.

With every piece built and finished, I set up my camera, lighting and sets. I used a Nikon camera passed to me by my father and lighting that was lent to me by one of my peers. The entire filming process took less than a week. Which compared to the time it took me to build the world in which my film took place, frustrated me slightly. It also cleared up any doubt I had about not finishing in time, as my filming took less than a week compared to my peers who had been animating for more than a few months.
My filming was flawless and without issue, I had organised all of my tools, materials, paints (for touchups), props and extra set pieces to be hotswapped in at a moments notice. After each scene was complete I took the SD card from the camera and uploaded the photos to my PC where I checked for bad frames and compiled the good frames into Adobe Premiere Pro. After the whole film was sequenced in Premiere Pro, I worked on the timing of shots, extending and looping some frames for dramatic effect, or cutting some shots and content that padded the film unecessarily. After 13 versions of the timing was complete, I had a VIP screening with my partner who pointed out more than one timing flaw I had missed. Upon this final tweak I began with sound design. This took longer than I expected and ran to two days before submission of the film for my deadline. The version I submitted had a deep array of sounds that complemeted each scene and shot to fully engage and immerse viewers. A lot of ambiance noises were used and in hindsight I spent too long focused on the blending of "cave hums" and "soft winds" instead of on the main action of the film.

Post submission, as of the 8th of May 2025, I havebeen working on reframing each shot to 16:9 aspect ratio from the original 4:3. I have also been redesigning the sound for showing at our graduate showcase and potentially entry into festivals.

This project has encompassed nearly every single skill I have learned over my course and I am really pleased with the outcome of this film. Those who have seen it so far have boosted my confidence and compelled me to keep working into the early hours of the morning. My tutors and peers have also kept me motivated along the way with advice from their own projects and experiences. I am eternally grateful for this journey and truly hope I can apply my enthusiasm and skills to another stop-motion film or work in the creation of a world that entertains people on screen.