DIY Animated Short Film

An animation that captures the idea of floating and buoyancy made with blender about the adventures of a message-in-a -bottle. With calm underwater scenes, and a raging storm! Also, some extra tips and tricks to make your own animation!

This Instructable goes through the journey and the problems faced when making a simple animation, learn skills like keyframing, modeling, simple animation, camera basics, texture painting, grease pencil, uploading animations from Mixamo, finding free assets and more!

This animation took me a while to make; I started a week before Halloween of 2025. I have learned a lot from making this and am thankful for the deadline to finish my first short film, and not only that, but I was also able to document it on this website that I use for many things. I've had some experience, one of the entries mentioned the famous donut tutorial, I took that a few years ago. I also had to learn video editing. So, thank you Instructables! Thank you, Autodesk, this was an amazing opportunity.

The supplies needed for this project are as follows:

1. Computer or Laptop
2. Electricity and Wi-Fi
3. Mouse (the computer kind)
4. and an extra 15 or so Gigabytes free

Here are some Blender shortcuts you can refer to later:

shift+a = add

g = move

g+y = move along the y axis

g+x= move along the x axis

g+z= move along the z axis

shift+tilda = first person movement

ctrl+s = Save

All good animations are planned before being created, so in this first step I created what I thought to be a pretty decent storyboard. Storyboards are rough sketches of what you want scenes to look like and also what types of shots you want established. One shot used here is the establishing shot, you would use this shot to capture the feeling and size of the scene. Another shot would be a close-up; this would be to capture detail and emotion of a scene. There are many different shots to use, just don't use too many different ones otherwise it would be chaotic. A good way to create a story board is to always start with an establishing shot or even a zoomed out shot, this will get the audience to realize the setting of the animation. Finally, at the end of the board you will want a final zooming out shot or establishing shot, this will make the audience know that the animation is finishing.

In this step I created a list of models I would need to make this animation; this would include things that you would need in all of the scenes.

My list for the Message in A Bottle Animation:

1. Ocean
2. Town
3. Docks
4. seagulls
5. main character
6. bottle
7. paper with message
8. town lights
9. fish
10. whales
11. boats
12. the sun and moon
13. barnacles and seaweed
14. some sort of camera sun effect
15. puddles?
16. trash?

You can always add more, but this is just to make a list of things you will need in your animation based on the storyboard. Once you have the list you can then figure out which ones can be made later on, for instance, I know of a modifier in Blender that would help me create the ocean while I'm working.

In this step we will measure the bottle. There should be just enough detail for the close-up scenes as well as trying to keep it simple enough to not look way to complicated. So, first things first we should google some references, try to find something that would fit well with what you imagine the bottle should look like. After finding the image you're going to want to open up Blender.

If you don't already have it, what you are going to want to do is go to Just a moment... and download Blender for your computer, after downloading it, you will then check your files with the file explorer and double click the file to start installing it. The file will guide you through the steps of setting it up and then you will be ready to continue.

Now that Blender is open, go ahead and create a new general file.

1. You will be met with a cube, a light, and a camera. Delete all of them by pressing "a" on your keyboard and then hitting "x" then click delete. (or some computers have a built-in delete button)
2. Use the command: Shift+A to access the add an object menu, then select Mesh>Cube, this will add a cube to your scene.
3. By pressing the scroll wheel on your mouse and moving it around will rotate the view of how you see your cube. (if you don't have a mouse, just use two fingers on your touchpad)
4. Next hit "Tab" on your computer this will bring you into edit mode, where you can edit the cube.
5. Once in edit mode, press "m" and "merge at center" this will create a single vertex to start modelling the bottle.
6. in the top right-ish of the screen there will be an orientation widget that looks colorful, with the axis on them, click on either the y or x values (-x,x,y,-y) and it will have you looking directly from that axis.
7. Press Tab again to go back into object mode and then use Shift+A again to then use image>reference, then select the reference image you downloaded.
8. Select the Cube/Vert again and press tab.
9. select the dot and press "E" this will extrude the vert, and you are then able to move it around with your mouse, click along the outline of the bottle, but only half the bottle. (You may have to use "g" and then "z" to move the vert to the bottom middle of your reference.) Make sure not to model any cap or cork.
10. Then hold "shift" while selecting the bottom two vertices and the press "f" this will bridge the gap between them
11. rotate the view until you are looking above and from the side of your new face
12. click "a" then find the "Spin" toggle on the left of the screen, (you may need to scroll down to find it)
13. once made hold "ctrl" and spin the blue "+" buttons on screen, until you have a good shape that doesn't intersect. Then increase the steps to however much you think necessary. (less is better)
14. click "tab" again, then click on the reference image and click "h" this will hide it from view.
15. Congrats, you made the general shape of the bottle!

In this step we'll just be adding some finishing touches to the model.

1. Next rotate to a side view of the bottle and hit Tab
2. You may still be on "spin" so click the cursor at the top of the left widget.
3. If your bottle is like mine, the bottom is not flat, and doesn't look very good, so select the very bottom vert then hit "o" this will turn on proportional editing.
4. then hit "g" and then "z" to move it up, use the scroll wheel on your mouse to change the influence size of the proportional editing.
5. Once it's in a good spot, click on the blank space away from the bottle, or right click. (do this whenever you don't need anything selected or when you are finishing an edit process)
6. Make sure to save your project every few minutes or so. (ctrl+s)
7. next, if once again your bottle looks like mine, there isn't much geometry in the middle, this could prove to be a disadvantage later on. so simply hit "ctrl+r" to make a loop cut and then move your mouse around till it makes a circle around the middle, use the scroll wheel to increase the number of cuts to your liking then hit right click.
8. then hit tab again and you finished the bottle model!

In this step we'll be shading the bottle, this includes nodes and colors, enjoy!

1. I wanted to give this bottle a green hue of sorts and also make it translucent.
2. head over to the shading tab and select the bottle.
3. then hit new (BOOM nodes appeared)
4. click the drop down where it says transmission and enter a value of 1.
5. next click Shift+a and type mix, then select mix shader, drag it until it's in-between the other two nodes and the drop it.
6. drag from the other shader dot on the mix shader node and let go again, this will bring up the add nodes menu again. select glass and drop it.
7. make the color on the glass node a nice green color.
8. switch the render engine to cycles (sorry if you have a slow computer, cycles can be hard on some computers that have low graphics performances.)
9. and increase the factor on the mix node until it looks right.
10. my finished shader nodes are in the images for this step.

This step is an easy way to get free 3d models online, I will be using a trusted sight used by many called Sketchfab. It is a wonderful online tool where you can upload or download 3d models for personal or professional use.

1. After some searching on the website, I came across this model: Sketchfab that fits the style and purpose that I need.
2. Simply click download on the link provided above and then hit the .GLB format. This is a format that is good for blender and doesn't risk the loss of materials that other file types may encounter.
3. Once finished, click the "file" tab in blender and then hit New>General, after saving the bottle you are then going to import the docks.
4. click "A" and then x to delete the default cube, light, and camera.
5. After that go to the file menu and hit import>gltf 2.0/GLB this will open the file explorer for you to grab the docks from.
6. Once you find the file hit import and you uploaded a free 3d model from Sketchfab!
7. Feel free to delete the floating sign this dock 3d model came with.
8. Do "ctrl+s" and then save your file with something you'll remember.

Using the file you just saved we are going to import and position some more models that we will use later.

1. Go to Sketchfab
2. get this model: Sketchfab by downloading the .Blend version of it (complete animation loops)
3. unzip it
4. go into a new file on blender: File>New>General
5. For this new model you will use: File>Append and then locate the fish folder, then source>fish.blend>collection>collection
6. next is to set up the missing texture since this particular model has it missing (they forgot to pack the resources)
7. Go to the shaders tab and locate the "open image" button on the image texture node.
8. click textures, then click the image. You're all set for this fish!
9. Delete the light and camera and then save the file as something like "fish"

For this step, we will be using an extremely useful free Autodesk tool called Mixamo, this website is great for beginners working with Blender, it can rig your own models for you as well as providing a huge selection of pre-animated poses to transfer to your models or their own free models you can choose from.

1. I am going to use the animation tool from Mixamo and grab a simpler character from sketchfab so that I'm able to animate the face later with a built-in tool called grease pencil.
2. So, grab this model from sketchfab: stylized base mesh and download the fbx version, this will work with Mixamo.
3. go back to Mixamo and upload the new character as a zip file.
4. Next position the circles on the appropriate spots, if you place them elsewhere there will be problems later on. Hit next once you are done.
5. Now we choose what animation we want, the first thing on the storyboard is a walk cycle. Simply search for one that you like, and you can edit its style or the way the character will walk. make sure to click In place that way we won't have problems later.
6. Then hit download and keep the default settings.
7. Also grab a sitting animation, this will also be helpful in the first scene.
8. Then create a new Blender file that we will use for the first scene.

This step is for starting to setup scene 1.

1. append the docks by using file>append and then find the docks blend file.
2. then import the walk cycle from Mixamo
3. it'll be small so use "s" to scale it up to your liking.
4. make sure to select either the bones or shift select both the bones and the person if you accidentally click off.

For this step we are going to use the tools of "y" "x" and "z" to move the character into place. And also "r" and "g" r is to rotate and g is to move.

1. first use object>origin>set origin to geometry, this will make things easier to move.
2. select the character and move it towards the middle of one of the docks using "g" and then using one of the keys "x" "y" or "z" to move it along a specified axis.
3. Next we are going to duplicate some keyframes to make the walk longer
4. grab the bottom window of the timeline and drag it upward, this will make things easier to handle
5. all the yellow diamonds on the timeline are keyframes, these are keys that specify where the character will move, scale, or more at each frame.
6. all the keyframes are already made thanks to Mixamo, so all we have to do is duplicate them to make the animation longer.
7. hit "a" to select all keyframes
8. hit Shift+D to duplicate them
9. then move them to the last keyframe of the original animation.
10. do this again a few times to get the desired length, I did this 7 times
11. use a scroll wheel to zoom into the timeline, you can also use shift+scroll-wheel-button to move the timeline view
12. currently the animation is set to 250 frames, which is about 10 seconds once rendered. We want this to be longer, about 21 seconds which would be around 650 frames. drag the end frame setting to 650.
13. by dragging the timeline line, position the time to the 0 frame
14. then click "i" this will create a new keyframe at the position in which your character is.
15. then go to the end of your duplicated frames and move the character to the edge of the dock and click "i" again.
16. Select both keyframes of the character, (not the bones) and right click. go to Interpolation mode>linear this will make the animation smooth instead of speeding up at the end

Remember to use Ctrl+S to save your current project, name it something like: Scene1.blend

In this next step we are going to use the ocean modifier to make the ocean. There are many ways to use this so feel free to explore the different options and remember that Ctrl+Z (undo button) is a good friend.

1. Shift+A and make a plane
2. Go to the modifiers tab and click new and search for ocean
3. I'm going to scale it up a bit and also move it up on the z axis
4. go to the 0 frame, and hit the dot next to "time"
5. go to frame 650 and to the same except drag the time to
6. change size and depth until you get something that looks, good, I provided the settings I used in an image above
7. Use repeat x and repeat y to make a bigger ocean, normally this wouldn't be good for pro animations, but for this simple tutorial it wont matter because of later steps.
8. Feel free to move the extra dock objects to make things look good
9. Some dock items may be joined together when you don't want them to be, simply go into edit mode, select the object that you want and use separate by selection. Also, this model separates the nails; to fix this just select the dock the nails should go to Shift+click the nails and hit ctrl+j to join them.
10. You can also duplicate parts to make more and make some docks longer. Make things look nice! :]

For this step we will be making a simple island, in the storyboard it was a town, but an island town is simpler and better for the story.

1. Add a plane then go to edit mode and scale it up and move it up to see it
2. then right click to add subdivisions of about 10
3. move it towards the docks and enter the sculpt tab
4. use the negative setting and drag to sculpt. use ctrl+z when needed and also "s" for scale
5. go back into layout mode and right click the "plane" to shade smooth
6. duplicate it to add some more islands

In this step you will texture paint the islands.

1. head over to the texture paint tab
2. hit new image
3. select color of sand
4. go to the shaders tab
5. Hit new material
6. drag out from base color and search for image texture
7. click new for the image
8. go back to texture tab
9. color a simple landscape on the island of a grass color on top of a sand color.
10. select the other islands and find the material of the first island and select it.

After reviewing the islands, I wanted to add houses, but they were to small but the right scale in terms of height. an easy way to fix this is by scaling by axis.

1. go back to the layout tab
2. select the island and hit s and the "x" or "y" depending on your setup.
3. scale it! (using "s")
4. now let's get some houses, palms trees, and bigger ships. I used this model on Sketchfab that includes bigger ships and other things that will be helpful later on: Sketchfab (use the glTF)
5. import it, make sure to unzip it or else you won't be able to find it.
6. move it into place and scale it, use previous steps instructions on how.
7. Some models are wonky, so simple right click and delete the parents with Parent>clear parent
8. just like with the dock customization step, use the same method to duplicate and separate the model.
9. have fun with it!

This step will show you how to make a simple ocean shader that works wonders.

1. got to the materials tab on the bottom right of the screen
2. set the roughness to Zero and the IOR to 1.333
3. click the transmission drop-down and set it to 1
4. Add a mix shader node and connect it to a transparent node
5. make the transparent node color to blue
6. make the factor on the mix shader node 0.58

The simplest ocean shader I use for water, very easy and not complicated unlike other procedural shaders.

This step goes over creating a simple ocean floor for aesthetics.

1. scale the plane up and make sure it is the same scale as the ocean.
2. move it on the "z" axis until its slightly above the bottom of the islands. (this way it doesn't look like the islands are floating.)
3. Enter edit mode and right click to subdivide. (change the subdivision number to 20 or subdivide 20 times)
4. go to sculpt mode
5. Set it to negative to create elevation for the ocean floor
6. Have fun there's no wrong way to do this unless you make the brush HUGE.

Now for shading the floor

1. go to the shaders tab
2. add a new shader
3. make the color black

For this step we will be using an HDRI: High Dynamic Range Image. This image is usually made up of 4 images and create a world shader. PolyHaven is another resource like Sketchfab that is completely free unless you want paid items.

1. Go to Polyaven.com
2. Select the HDRI category
3. Select the Skies Category
4. Select Citrus Orchard Road (Pure Sky) (this one has pretty clouds unlike some of them)
5. Download the 2K EXR version.
6. Go back to Blender

Now that we have the HDRI downloaded we'll get it imported into the first scene.

1. go to world tab
2. click the yellow dot and select the image texture option
3. upload the HDRI

Its that simple!

Next add an sun by doing Shift+A and then locate light and select sun.

This step adds one of the most important pieces of an animation, the digital camera.

1. Shift+A to add camera
2. Select the depth of field option in the camera settings
3. then use shift+A to add an empty sphere
4. select the camera again
5. and use the waterdropper on the depth of field to select the sphere. This will create an easy-to-use camera focus.
6. Change the F-stop to 0.2 and the blades to 6
7. Next select the camera view, do this every time to view from the camera and use the scroll wheel button to escape from camera view.
8. Next use Shift+~(tilde) to move around like a video game with wasd.
9. Get used to switching between camera mode and regular mode.
10. move the sphere to the person, this will make a beautiful camera focus effect. hit "i" to keframe its location
11. go to frame 250 and move it to the person again and hit "i" once more.

Don't forget to save!

Also, important note, under file and external data make sure to check the pack resources checkbox.

Now to follow the storyboard, starting off is a view of the character walking from the side. Then a bird's-eye and a close-up followed by the writing scene, which we'll get to later. For this step we will make a simple camera animation to get the basics down.

1. position the camera facing the character from the side.
2. click "i" to keyframe the moment
3. then move the timeline to about the 75th frame and position again to the character.
4. right click and set interpolation mode to linear.
5. Next move the timeline to the very next frame and move the camera until it is facing a good birds-eye view right above the character
6. press "i" to keyframe
7. move the timeline to the 200th frame and hit "i" to keyframe.
8. next position it looking from underneath facing the character on the very next frame. hit "i"
9. go to frame 250 and have the camera rotate a bit and hit "i" to keyframe again.
10. at 250, you'll also want to hit "i" on the disable in renders button to make sure it renders up until 251 when you'll hit "i" again on the disable rendering button after clicking to make it disappear in render so we can use the other animation we downloaded.

This step adds the animation of the character sitting.

1. Simply import fbx and grab the sitting fbx
2. position it
3. move the key frames to start from 251 and duplicate them a few times
4. like with the previous one we'll keyframe render visibility at invisible until 251
5. scale it down to fit the same size as the previous animation

Now we will make a seamless transition from the walking to sitting animations by changing camera view and adding some technique.

1. go into camera view and frame 251, then position the camera facing the character from head height facing from kind of far off from the docks
2. Now we are going to use a common trick that movies, shows, and any media really uses to create a sense of calm transitioning of views; Simply have the camera go in the same general direction it used to be going before it changed. If this were an action scene, things would be different.
3. move the timeline to 3/4 to the end of the sitting animation and position the camera going the same way it did before, for me it was rotating to the left. Then keyframe.
4. I also decided to use the elements that were in the scene to create a sense of foreshadowing by displaying a boat in the backdrop.

Don't forget to save!

This step goes over animating the character viewing the bottle in the sea.

1. Next move the timeline to right after the camera animation from before and position the camera to face over the shoulder of the character looking down. Keyframe.
2. Append the bottle
3. move the bottle to sit in the water below the characters feet.
4. animated it so that it can move up and down with the waves. The best way to do this is by picking an imaginary line across the bottle where you want the bottle to float and the moving the timeline every few frames and repositioning it so that the water stays in line with your line. Have it rotate and move about, it's good to experiment.
5. now move the camera to the end of that animation and have it move to the left or right depending on which way your camera was moving before. Just slightly so that it doesn't effect the "over-the-shoulder" kind of look.
6. Feel free to add extra keyframes in between

This step goes over modelling the piece of paper the character writes on.

1. create a plane and go into edit mode
2. subdivide the plane
3. hit "1" so that your able to select vertexes only
4. use "g" to move the vertexes to make it look like a paper
5. hit "o" to turn on proportional editing (this will make things smoother depending on the amount it affects which you can switch with the scroll wheel.
6. Give it a slight curl on both sides so that the character can hold it.
7. Position it so that it can be held by the character
8. right-click to shade smooth

For this step we don't have a premade animation, so we'll have to do it ourselves. The goal is to not make it too complicated, so we are going to use a close-up, so we only have to animate, the head, the arms. This is a technique that a lot of animation studios use all the time to save time and budget.

1. on the very next frame after the previous animation, position the camera looking above the legs and at the head but a little below so that we can see the paper.
2. Select the paper and make in viewable in render at the same time the camera switches
3. Now select the bones of the characters and go to the object settings and press in front under viewport visibility.
4. next position one of the hands fingers around the paper and the other hand in front of the paper so you can't see the other hand.
5. Next animate the arm that's hidden to make a writing motion of just up and down animate the head leaning from side to side as well to add character do "a" and "i" to keyframe all the bones.

In this step we'll animated the character shoving the paper into the bottle using a lattice, and shape keys.

1. Go to the object data tab and create two new shape keys
2. go to edit mode and curve the paper to make it rolled up
3. go back to object mode and set shape key 1 to 0 and keyframe it by using right-click
4. go to the very next frame and set the value to 1 and keyframe it again, this will make the paper unfurled in the all the frames prior, and the very next on rolled up.
5. position the bottle and keyframe it
6. next animate the paper slipping into the bottle. (This may take a while.)

Now that we've animated the writing and shoving the paper in the bottle parts, we'll now grab some more pre-animated files from Mixamo

1. grab a standing up animation
2. scale it, position it and animated the bottle in the characters hands
3. next grab another Mixamo animation but this time have it be a throwing animation (I am going to use "Goalie Throw" because of the effort the character makes)
4. import it, scale it, position it and then animate the bottle being thrown, add some spins!
5. make sure to keyframe the rendering so that only one person is seen at a time

For this step we are going to animate the bottle sinking into the water. Since we already have a lot going on in the scene already, we'll make a separate blend file for this.

1. create file>new>general and save the previous scene1.blend
2. next append the bottle and re-create the ocean from steps 12 and 16
3. add a cube underneath and scale it to fit
4. next add a dynamic paint modifier to the bottle and the ocean
5. click add canvas for the ocean and add brush for the bottle
6. make the ocean dynamic paint to waves (this will add a little more effect to the scene)
7. next animate the bottle dropping into the water and bobbing up and down
8. make the cube under the ocean the same shader as the ocean
9. add a principled volume and use the settings shown in the image above
10. copy step 17 for an ocean floor and step 20 to add a camera and depth of field

Add some bubble using this link: Sketchfab

1. import them
2. scale them to fit your preferences
3. animate them going down
4. add the fish and animate it going towards the bottle
5. add the hdri from step 18 and 19

Since the scene we made with the splashdown, it already has the basics to use for scene 2 so we'll use the same blend file to do that.

1. animate the simple zoomed-out establishing from the storyboard. (some things will change from the storyboard depending on difficulty and time constraints)
2. grab this model: Low Poly Bird
3. import them, position and scale them
4. add an empty circle to use as a reference
5. animate three birds going in a circle

This step is adding clouds to the part of the floating scene.

1. grab this model: Sketchfab
2. import it and set up the camera scene
3. animate the clouds passing by slowly

This step goes over making waves bigger and the skies darker.

1. next keyframe the size of the waves to make them larger on the next frame
2. then keyframe the world shader/hdri strength from 9 to 1 (this will make things darker)
3. animated the bottle and camera going underwater for a short bit then popping back up
4. and then do the same but backwards to create the calm after the storm (yes, I know the saying "calm before the storm" but this is the calm after.)

This is a fun step, during the calm, the scene sort of acts like a timelapse. Barnacles appear on the bottle as well as some seaweed.

1. add a cylinder
2. select the top face and scale it down
3. inset the face using "i" and extrude it downward
4. that's it for the modeling part!
5. next select the bottle, go to the modifiers tab and add a geometry nodes modifier
6. head over to the geometry nodes tab and add the following: Distribute points on faces, join geometry, instances on points, random value, object info.
7. next connect them to each other by looking at the image above.
8. if your barnacles end up huge, simply select the barnacle and use ctrl+A and apply the scale.

For this step we are going to use the value of number of barnacles to make it seem as though they are appearing in seconds as the bottle passes by, creating a sort of timelapse effect.

1. go to the beginning of the passing by scene and keyframe the number of barnacles to be small
2. go to the end of the passing by and make it as large as you want and keyframe that too.

This effect is super simple but adds a lot to the animation.

1. add a plane and scale it on either the x or y axis to make it thinner.
2. loop cut it using ctrl+r
3. select vertices and random and while using "o" for proportional editing make it look squiggly.
4. next we are going to add a simple armature to the seaweed (Don't worry! it's only a few bones)
5. Add a bone
6. scale and position it onto the seaweed
7. in edit mode extrude the bone upward
8. select the seaweed then shift+select the seaweed
9. right-click and do parent>with automatic weights
10. go into pose mode and animated the seaweed crawling out of the bottle during the barnacle timelapse (this will take a while)

For this step we'll add the whale, and a few of the extra camera animations. While I was looking for assets, I figured why not give this whale some creative flare and use a community model from a video game called: Subnautica, just to add some wonder to the animation.

1. next create an animation of the camera zooming out
2. grab the whale here: Sketchfab
3. import it, unplug the alpha node
4. animate it gliding across the screen and feel free to have the tail and fins above the water for the effect that the water is getting shallower (and the bottle is reaching its destination)
5. also, you may have to hide render the cube of water to get that shallow look.
6. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to do a particle system for the water blast from the whale, fortunately, I was able to create a simple animation that includes the water blast but it is just two images as planes
7. add the image file below by using Shift+A>Image>mesh plane.
8. scale it and position it onto the whale's spout.
9. duplicated it and rotate it 180 degrees to at least give it a little 3d effect.

Save!

In this step we'll be setting up the third and final scene.

1. copy the objects from scene 2 using ctrl+C and open a new file
2. Use ctrl+V to paste the objects into the scene, now we have the ocean and the bottle.
3. the ocean modifier is premade, but as a reminder in case things don't work out, to make the ocean animated simply type in #frame/30 in the time
4. Add the camera into the scene using Shift+a
5. animate the bottle dropping into the water and then popping back up giving it the effect of a buoyant object that resists sinking and is staying afloat keeping the message contained and safe
6. grab a boat model from sketchfab, this is the one that I used:
7. Next animate the boat coming towards the bottle: Sketchfab
8. add the hdri and set the strength to 8
9. 
   
10. 
    

Next is the part of animating the bottle grab

1. first import the character and scale and position it on the boat.
2. next parent the characters armature to the boat
3. set the bones to be in front for the viewport visibility.
4. animated the character scooping up the bottle (easier said than done for sure, as seen in the images above)
5. next have the camera switch to the character on the boat holding the bottle.

Now it is time to animate the character reading the message, shown above is the rendered image of the scene complete with the face animation.

1. Go to scene 1, don't forget to save scene 3 first, and copy the message and paste it into scene 3
2. delete all the keyframes for it
3. position it in the bottle and parent it to the bottle.
4. next animate the paper being taken out of the bottle and being unfurled, to do this use the shape key we made earlier and animate that.

For this step we will animate the character's emotion showed through hands and body language, we will animate the faces in the next step.

1. To show emotion in this step, I am going to have the character slump, look into the distance and have the camera zoom-out
2. animate the head going from side to side as if reading
3. have both the hands drop
4. have the character stare into the distance
5. have the camera zoom out
6. in the geometry nodes tab make sure to add a lot of barnacles

Save scene 3

For this step we have to animate the faces of the characters in scenes 1 and 3, because they are the only two scenes with our character. This is frame by frame animation, which does take a while to do, for me personally it took around 5 hours to do all the facial expressions, it could take less time if you only want to animate eyes, or cut corners by giving your character a blindfold or a mask so that you don't have to animate as much.

1. open up scene 1
2. add a blank grease pencil
3. go into draw mode and select on surface
4. set the strength to 1
5. add a keyframe and draw the face
6. Turn on onion skin, this makes it easier to have a nice flow to the animation
7. every few frames make a new keyframe and redraw the face, do this until you are satisfied with the result
8. Make sure to animate a blink every now and then! It makes the animation seem more real and fluid.

To make things easier, you could use a drawing tablet if you have one. And as seen in the image above, using shift+"I" will make keyframing grease pencil quicker.

Please don't do this all-in-one go, it takes a loooong time and is very frustrating at times, also its not good for your eyes unless you have blue light glasses.

In this step we'll animate the facial expressions of the receiver of the message, and to add mystery and to make the audience think, the actual message is never shown to the audience making them wonder what could have possibly been on it! To save time, don't animate the face off camera, just leave a blank keyframe until the face is back in view.

1. open up scene 3
2. animate a surprised expression while the character spots the bottle
3. animate an interested expression while the character opens the bottle (have a tongue sticking out for showing effort)
4. animate an expression while reading the paper, whether its sadness, happiness, or joy. (Be creative! do whatever you feel like!)

For this step, we are going to use the free open-source render farm called Sheep-it. This render farm has been tested many times for malware and other things and is completely safe, I've used it many times for smaller projects, and it is a great way for blender users with low-end PCs to render their projects.

Sheep-It render farm is a website in which you create a free account and then once you've helped rendered only 10 frames of other projects, you are able to begin. (The reason for this is to make sure you are not a robot and it is a benchmark as well, to see your PC's specs.) If you happen to have a lower-end PC like me, after a while they may gift points to your account.

1. On all of your blend files, make sure "automatically pack external resources" is checked and everything is saved.
2. go to https://www.sheepit-renderfarm.com/ and create a new free account
3. go to the get started page and download the sheepit .exe
4. render 10 frames (this could take a while, but it is worth it)
5. go back to the get started tab and upload scene1
6. select the generate mp4 and render by GPU (this will create a video preview, so you are able to see any mistakes, and selecting GPU is the fastest way to go)
7. click "add blend" and let the magic begin
8. you are able to render up to three projects at a time

I've used Sheep-it for a while now, they have a very nice community, some people are nice enough to leave their PCs running while they are away, some even use extra computers they don't need.

In this step we'll be uploading our rendered projects into DaVinci resolve (FREE video editor!)

1. download DaVinci from here: DaVinci Resolve: All-in-One Video Editor – Download Now
2. open DaVinci
3. Create a new project
4. drag and drop the image sequence folders from your files into the master media pool (this will automatically make it an image sequence)
5. go back to the timeline editor drag and drop and drop the scenes into order.

Now you have all you need to start editing!

No Blender sometimes doesn't always run at the full 30fps or whatever frames per second you are running it at in the viewport and so you can fix it slightly in post but slowing down or speeding up the video in some parts. (This only happens if you have a large file and a low-end computer)

1. Find a spot in your video where you want things to be slower or faster
2. right before the part, hit ctrl+B and also right after the part, this will split it from the whole
3. set the speed to however slow or fast you want, if you make it slower, it will decrease fps and make it look a little strange, but it adds to the effect.

In this step we'll add transitions to the scenes, this will make things smoother.

1. head over to the transitions tab
2. add your first transition, such as a dissolve, simply drag and drop the transition in between scenes
3. feel free to do whatever transition you want, and split scenes to add more.
4. Next grab the first scene and add it to the end
5. cut the scene until it's the zoomed-out shot
6. next add the title at the end
7. Use the inspector tab to edit it
8. have a fade transition to make it smooth

The credits are a very important part of the short film, they show who did what and what credit should be given to who?

1. At the end add another title but this time make it the down scrolling one to make credits
2. write down credits such as song use, made by, and any other external resources you used to give credit (such as SketchFab and Mixamo)

For this step we'll be adding sound effects from Pixibay, a free website that has loads of sounds you can download for free! This is one of the most fun parts of creating a video.

1. Next in the search bar look up any sounds affects you want, for this animation, I'll be looking for water and ocean sound effects, along with seagulls, perhaps some music and a storm.
2. head over to pixabay.com
3. go to the sound effects tab
4. look up an ocean sound
5. find the one you like and download it
6. head back to DaVinci and select import media in the media pool and drag and drop the sound effect to wherever the calm ocean sound needs to be.
7. add more sounds, this could take a while
8. also add some background music from the same website and try to time it up at some points

You've made it to the end of the tutorial, congratulations! (Or you just scrolled down to see it first :] )

1. before exporting make sure everything looks right, make things slower, faster, cut extra sound effects etc.
2. go to the quick export and keep the default settings and hit export.

This was a journey that had a lot of things happen in-between. Although the animation is simple, it reflects the message that's hidden within it; how hard it can be to get a message across. Both literally and figuratively. I hope that someone may create this or use it for any individual step, whether it's something as simple as grease pencil animation, or creating an animation. I have to thank Autodesk for this opportunity; I haven't finished many animations but at least now I can look back on this and hopefully see improvement in my future.

The animation itself shows buoyancy, floating, and being adrift. The message in the bottle creates a sense of suspense making the audience ask; what was written on that message? The idea of being lifted from under water by the contents inside, as well as the weathered appearance of the outside shows that its always whats on the inside that really counts.