Original •

introduction

This was a project for an "animation jam" hosted by the BNPR community. The challenge was to make an animation from scratch in 3 weeks.

I decided to make an original short about a conductor fighting his way back to the front of a comically booby-trapped train to regain control from a train jacker.

A short selection of clips from the short.

model

Many rigging and constraint techniques were used for the environment. For ease of animating the characters, I wanted to keep the train in place while everything moves around it. To do this I used a curve modifier that I could "push" the track model down, combined with circular environmental movement for rocks and plants surrounding it.

I was also able to use the same offset data to automatically shift the noise of the displacement modifier on the smoke, as well as jostling the traincars ever so slightly.

All of these pieces together give the illusion the train is moving, when in reality it's the only object that doesn't move from it's initial position at all.