• Christopher Cheng (cjcheng@mit.edu)
• Joyce Lin (joycelin@mit.edu)
• Emily Liu (emliu@mit.edu)

Problem/Goals
Our project goals can be broken down into two main areas: technical goals that represent the graphical challenges of using unfamiliar tools to model complex scenes, and animation goals that represent the creation of an aesthetically pleasing and entertaining sequence for audiences to enjoy.

Technical Goals:

• To model an accurate likeness of Star market, the location of our plot.
• To realisticly model daytime and night time through effects of lighting, reflection, and shadowing.
• To manage the physics of the movement of the characters.

• Smoothly transition between frames/scenes.
• To effectively animate the different facial expressions of our main character.
• Achieve proper cinematography (including camera angles, camera panning, sound, lighting, and any special effects) in order to make an entertaining animation sequence.

First Scene: The camera will begin outside of Star Market, our perspective will go up the escalators and head towards the produce section. Next, the camera will zoom into the tomato table and show the tomato with his eyes closed on the table. Suddenly, a hand reaches out to pick him up. The tomato gets placed into the cart and then while the cart is being being wheeled around, he accidently rolls out of the children's leg section of the cart. At this point our hero is on the floor and he must avoid being stepped on. Finally, he rushes to the side of the aisle where he is protected by the shelf that he is underneath. While he is hiding, day becomes night and you see his eyes blink until he feels safe enough to come out. Now enters the night scene.
Difficulties: The difficulty of this scene lies in a couple of areas. One is the design of the hand, and trying to make the scene in which the tomato is "stolen" as realistic as possible, in rendering a shape that cannot be easily described by polygons. Another difficulty lies in the lighting of the scenes in trying to simulate realism in a supermarket.

Night Scene: The tomato hops around the supermarket, through various aisles, encountering various different challenges involving getting lost, meeting other "live" products, and other various physical obstacles. He continues to circle through the supermarket, peeking around corners and running away from shadows and movement that scares him, until he finally finds his produce section with his fellow tomatoes. Hopefully, it will be possible to give this scene the mood of being a litle bit suspenseful and a little bit eerie as the tomato tries to find his way through a darkened place.
Difficulties: The difficulty of this scene lies in trying to produce night-time lighting affects. Creating the soft shadows necessary to simulate a dimly lit area and allowing just enough light to shine may prove challenging. Creating shadows in the right places and trying to give the tomato the appearance of being frightened may also be difficult. Setting the mood with the lighting will probably be the most difficult task.

Ending Scene: The tomato turns the corner, and suddenly, his eyes glaze over with the happiness of seeing his home. He turns and hears the sweet sound of his sibling tomatoes screaming out his name in joy. From here, the tomato runs(or rather hops) toward the table in a dream like sequence until he is met by another tomato who has jumped off the table to greet him. (This sequence is intended to be in slow motion.) Both tomatos are jumping up and down with joy because they are reunited once again. As tears roll down the tomato's eyes, all the tomatoes jump off their produce counter and all the tomatoes begin to dance. This dance is the finale of the animation sequence.
Difficulties:The difficulties of this scene lie in how to change the mood from one of suspense to one of joy. Perhaps the mood can be changed in the way the lighting is done, the way the shadows are cast, or through the music. Rendering this scene may take a long time, given the large number of objects in the space (all of the tomatoes).

Tools/Resources
Possible tools to help us finish our project include RenderMan or Alias on SGIs, and 3D Studio on PCs. Other resources that we might use include: photos of interior of Star Market, sound clips for background music as well as sound effects of the characters, and sound editing software for meshing in our sound clips.

As two of our team members own not-too-powerful laptops, we will probably be working on SGIs, unless generous friends with suitable desktop PCs can be found.

Division of Labor
At the beginning of the project, especially within the first week, much of our time will be spent learning the different tools that will be necessary to render frames and animate the sequence. During this period of time, each member of the team will learn different aspects of our tools, become "experts" at those aspects, and then cross-train each other in the basic operation. After this period of time, our main approach to this project will be iteration: building from simple to complex. Each of us will take a key scene and model that very basically. Two members will be put in charge of animating these draft scenes complete with basic cinematography, while the last team member will begin complex modeling of some objects. After the draft animation is complete, each member will again work on his/her separate scene, refining objects and other graphic effects.

Objects to Model:

• Outside of Star Market (building shell)
• Entrance of Star Market
• Produce section of Star Market
• Cash registers
• supermarket cart
• hand
• Our hero, the tomato
• Various aisles, not too detailed for now, we'll add detailed food items if we have time

Milestones
Checkpoint 1 - Oct. 29th

• Finish full written proposal with concrete organization of checkpoints and labor.

• Compare and select the software/hardware combination that will be used to render objects.
• Become familiar with these tools by learning how to navigate and utilize them. The level of our skills must allow us to begin basic object modeling.
• Finalize Plot, storyboard, and keyframes. The animation will be divided into distinct sequences and all graphical characteristics of each sequence will be defined.
• Begin sketching scene composition.

• Draft all main scenes of each animation sequence using simple objects(cylinders, spheres, cubes) to set scene composition.
• Find background music and research methods of integrating music with animation.
• Begin adding basic elements of lighting, camera angles, and animation.

• Finish draft version of complete animation. (i.e. first version of final animation sequence)
• Begin to complete detailed objects by increasing model and texture complexity.
• Refine lighting, environment, and animation.

• Final written report completed.
• Entire animation sequence finished.