ANUSHKA’S DIGITAL CREATIONS

Month: February 2026

  • 3DIFYING LEEBIT PT. 1 — SHAPING

    At the beginning of the Christmas holidays, I wanted nothing more than a break from the Out of your Head project. So naturally, I instead decided to conquer Blender.

    First, I created a character turnaround sheet of the character Leebit from the SKZOO merchandise franchise. He is usually my default option whenever I use a new drawing platform (mostly because he looks so silly, literally no other reason behind this choice).

    Leebit’s character turnaround sheet

    I watched a tutorial before the Christmas break but didn’t write any notes so I forgot basically everything, which is a great start. My laptop at the time was terrible, so I had to use the extremely old family iMac and download the 2015 version of Blender onto there. The interface looked so overwhelming at first, I really didn’t know how to begin. But I ended up watching a variety of tutorials (I usually don’t watch one because sometimes it doesn’t have what I’m looking for) and tried to get started.

    However, I reached some complications when trying to make the ears. Whenever I would extrude the sphere, another sphere would clone within, and I couldn’t delete it or ungroup it from the sphere I was working on. Moreover, there were no tutorials on how to ungroup or delete the duplicated sphere, so I left it as it was (it wasn’t visible unless you went on X-ray mode).

    The error I encountered (in X-ray mode)

    I successfully made the head (using separate spheres), but making the body was extremely difficult and I didn’t know what to search for to aid me, therefore I gave up and stopped working on the project for a while.

    My progress before pausing the project

    On Saturday (13th February), I downloaded Blender on my new laptop and decided to resume the project. The UI was so much easier to navigate, and I was able to successfully make Leebit’s body, alongside his arms and legs. Making his feet took longer as I didn’t know how to shape them and flatten the bottom, but I somehow managed.

    My progress so far

    Meanwhile I wrote every command I used since I kept forgetting when I worked on Leebit on the iMac back in December.

    My notes

    The next day, I used planes to make Leebit’s features (scaling them, making them 3D then shaping them into position), and paths for the antenna looking thing on his eyes (probably an eyelash or eye crease) and his mouth. I didn’t realise that I could make the entire body using just one cube as I ended up using several of them, thinking they would then seamlessly blend together when I used the shade smooth tool.

    My progress after finishing shaping Leebit’s features, joining the components and adding the shade smooth tool

    Overall he does look slightly misshapen, but I’m so proud of my creation nonetheless as I honestly thought making anything on Blender would be impossible and I wouldn’t be able to do it.

    Links to the tutorials I used throughout the project:

  • OUT OF YOUR HEAD — POST-PRODUCTION

    Please note: every video below is also on Padlet.

    I have split the content from Out of your Head into 3 sections to show the production pipeline and the chronology of how we worked throughout the project:

    WEEK 10:

    Our initial plan for post-production was for one of our groupmates to finish compositing before sending the file to me to add sound effects to, then sending it back to her to add voice acting. However, the last few days of the project were an unexpected turn of events. She decided to back away from the project, which threw everything off balance since she was in charge of editing and compositing. We then had to scramble to find a way to finish the project, and I was put in charge of editing the clips together alongside sound design.

    I used CapCut, the same program that I initially used to add sound to the animatic.

    My workspace on CapCut.

    Firstly, I duplicated the file with the animatic and sound effects, as we decided to reuse the same SFX (including voice acting). I then deleted the original clip and replaced it with everyone’s scenes in chronological order. Afterwards, I moved sounds around to match the timing (as a lot had changed since the animatic), then added more sound effects using Foley and effects from free-sound. Lastly, I voice acted for Phool once again, adding ad-libs such as a gasp or a grunt to scenes that required them. I ended up wrapping up post-production and submitting the final animation the day after.

    During this rather stressful period I frequently contacted the rest of the group and updated them on my progress with post-production, with them giving their input and feedback almost immediately. The fact that we all collaborated as a team helped us deliver the animation on time despite the challenges we faced.

    FINAL THOUGHTS:

    There is a lot of things that I would like to do differently next for the next project. The sound could have been more refined, and although this was largely a result of the issues we had the last couple of days before the film was due, this is still something I would like to improve upon for next time. Additionally, I would like to do rough animation alongside lineart and colour, and I wasn’t able to for this project (apart from for scene 10) due to going on holiday near the end of the Christmas break. I also want to improve upon my backgrounds and and learn compositing since both skills would come in handy in the future.

    In retrospect, the issue with clarity was a direct result of not having a producer, only a director. Oftentimes miscommunication derailed parts of the project and sometimes our roles and deadlines weren’t communicated properly. Therefore, I would like the opportunity to take on the producer role in later projects. While I know it would be a challenging experience, I would also love to learn a variety of skills related to teamwork and organisation that would greatly benefit me going forward. Next time, I would like to implement the following solutions to hopefully help in the production process:

    • Create a schedule that clearly outlines the roles that everyone has been assigned to, whether they have completed their roles and when each deadline is using resources such as a Gantt chart.
    • Provide information to group members if something hasn’t been explained well and clear up any miscommunication that arises to ensure everyone is on the same page, and we can work as efficiently as possible without any further issues.
    • If not properly established in pre-production, animators should clearly communicate with each other in terms of whether there are any inconsistencies that may affect the entire animation, for instance shot composition, key details in character designs that may have been missed, possible props to be animated, colour palettes etc.
    • A group chat should be made to send regular updates of work in progress so that people can help each other in time and we can all collaborate instead of relying on one person to give advice once we’ve finished everything. 

    Overall, I think our group did a fantastic job given the circumstances, and we executed almost every idea that we previously brainstormed. Everyone worked extremely hard, and the sheer effort and determination definitely paid off in the end. I am so proud of our group and how far we’ve come since the beginning of this project.