I’ve been busy animating some cats.
Belated update: We got our set together and put into Houdini, and just about have all the animation completely locked down. However, we cut the story by about two minutes due to time constraints around having a limited crew. After an extensive rewrite, it’s just short and sweet now, and the kitchen set (and most background elements in general) will be virtually unseen behind the depth focus.
Ongoing process of the set. All UV’d minus ongoing adjustments.
The For Luna team has been busy as ever lately. We’re rolling on getting the set done while simultaneously gearing up to get into blocking animation by next week. Above are some stills of a first lighting test with some early textures applied. We still have so much left, but it’s starting to feel real!
Forgot to post these! Concepts of the two portions for the For Luna set. We’ve been using these to construct the the layout and eventually to emulate the feel in the film. This was a fun style to try out.
WIP of the apartment. Made a rough proxy of the floor space, then rebuilt in photoshop so I can fully concept out the room.
Background layouts for the brand new animatic we’re working on.
Production has begun on For Luna once more, and will be ongoing for the next eight months. Attached, Rebel and Khloe concepts! These were fast paintings to get the design close to final, time to get these cuties going.
A couple rough scenes turned into the start of the animatic.
As I’m continuing the process of putting together beat boards into the first rough animatic, I’m starting to realize how important every small action is going to be for planning the animation out. I knew coming into this that each scene would be heavily dependent on each choreographed action of the cats, and it’s proving to be quite the challenge to get that minimally into existence with this first pass. Just a few scenes turned into 80 frames, and I’m guessing this first animatic will end up being somewhere above 600 frames based on how it’s currently going. I’m going to continue work on this through next week.
This week I started the preliminary process of putting together the first animatic, and discovered a number of hurdles that's going to make this process more difficult than those I've put together in the past. I don't brand myself as an excellent character artist (since environments always strike my fancy far for more), and what I realized is that this animatic is going to need fantastic gestural work- for quadrupeds. Which means that from a fundamental point, I need to practice this, and the characters need a solid 2D design I can use. All which will take time to work on. Playing to my strengths to at least get started, I've organized each act and the required locations and their backgrounds. Pulling from the existing style frames to start on basic locations.
For Luna concept still: Rebel and Luna napping.
For Luna concept still: Rebel meets Khloe.
For Luna concept still.
Research and Development I - Update
Above: Beat board stills added to the pitch presentation last Friday, which went better than expected! Out of the questions asked only one concern was brought up by the board, that a quadruped film could only be achieved with very talented animators. This is something I had planned for from the beginning- this film will not be an easy task, but it will be a challenge. I’ve been going to school for almost seven years, so I know I have little excuse not to push myself on this level. But it is my hope to attract other talented 3D animators and provide them a platform through this film to do incredible quadruped animation.
My plan if greenlit is to actually start our animators over the summer practicing on a test rig, or just some other quadruped rig we can find online. And then having weekly quadruped animations we practice until we come back in the Fall. This is a demanding film, so I plan to foster a demanding (yet constructive) environment for us to push ourselves beyond the level of typical student work.
The apartment is the only location really and so far definitely used outside the interior and suggested location of the cat carrier. (which I’m in the process of building style frames for) The apartment is genuinely warm and welcoming, it is on the third floor of an apartment complex in southern Georgia, and gets a lot of sunlight throughout the day. The style is modern like, hard edges on furniture, new, clean, and simple areas. Which allows for a lot of space on the floor right in front of the couch. (Essentially the main location our characters are in) The kitchen is essentially an island in the living room, and that has a large granite counter top that Rebel and Khloe interact with in the story’s finale. Since we’re going to be viewing this space from the cat’s height, I’d imagine experiencing most of the location with the background blurred in a pull focus.