Bridging the gap...

Alot has happened this past week. Sequences have been cut, shots have been redone, and the ending has been rewritten. This all stems from a midterm review (involving some intimidating instructors) that both knocked down and re-invigorated the team. After all the changes I am happy to report that the film is all the better for it.

As a special treat, today we have a first look at some of the actual film!

This is an excerpt from a sequence early on in the story. Jaguar is bed-ridden and wallowing in his own self pity. He is interrupted by his cat, who seems to want to be fed.


This is an example of the workflow we are following in this film.











Starting with the animatic, we first block out the shots and the camera moves in the CG Room environment.












We then hand off the shots to a 2d animator who animates over the CG plate using Flash. At the moment, we are still in the Keying and breakdown stage, in betweens and cleanup are going to be done in Photoshop.













Alfredo works on a shot that will be passed off to the 2d animators.


One interesting challenge we are trying to tackle in this project is the character of Jaguar himself. As a hybrid 2d/CG character, his body cast has been modeled and rigged in Maya, while his "organic" parts (his head, fingers, toes, and free leg) are 2d.














David Beach, our resident shader monkey, has been trying to wrestle with the difficult task of matching the CG and 2d elements into a cohesive look and style.










Here are some of his shader tests:














I know I promised some illustration work in this post, but due to the restructuring of the film, the illustrations are being reworked a bit. If there's anything we've learned from this process so far, it's that you can't get too attached to anything! See ya later!

Clint Donaldson, Director










(This post featured work from Jason Walling, Clint Donaldson, Shani Vargo, and David Beach)