I produced and directed This short film group project as part of my senior thesis, titled 'Metamorphosis'! It follows an artist as she deals with art block, and then finds inspiration from her past. Scroll down to see our process and progress from start to finish!
Credits
Rohit Arora- Director, Producer, FX & Lighting Artist, 3D Animator, Compositor
Emelie Gardanier- 2D Animator, Storyboard Artist, Compositor
Ethan Simpson- Background Artist, Title Design
DeAsia McMillon- 3D Environment Artist
Genesis Otero- Visual Development Artist, Character Design, 2D Animator
Yeonsoo Kim- Storyboard Artist, 2D Animator
Mia Portnoy- Production Coordinator
Idea
Initially, coming up with our story's idea was challenging because so much can be done! My initial thoughts were that:
1. I wanted to do something personal to me but, at the same time, relatable to many people.
2. I liked the idea of an artist entering their work somehow.
3. I wanted it to be a mix of 2D and 3D, as that was the best way to utilize the diverse skillsets of my team.
With these ideas in mind, my team and I were able to brainstorm and discuss different ways of approaching it until we could narrow it down to what we have now!
Character Design
We decided to use a pre-existing 3D character rig for our short, created by Wonderwell Studios. However, we still had to translate that design into two distinct 2D styles: a crayon-like child's drawing style of the character as a little girl and a bit more developed but still sketchy of her as a teenager, both designed by Genesis!
by Genesis Otero
Backgrounds
For backgrounds, specifically for our 2D animation, we needed to keep it wide since it would be scrolling behind our characters as they move. Our first one was done by Genesis, as she was already working on the child drawing style animation, and the second one was done by Ethan, who went for a very vivid, painterly style.
by Genesis Otero
by Ethan Simpson
Title Design
Once we decided on the title of our short film, we needed an intriguing title design to go with it! With the title being 'Metamorphosis', along with the fact that we had that motif playing throughout the short we had to make sure it was present in the design. Our team's background painter, Ethan came up with a ton of variations to see what worked!
by Ethan Simpson
Once we were able to narrow down what worked, I brought it into the 3D environment as a texture, as I liked the idea of the title reveal being naturally integrated into the environment!
Environment Layout
For the 3D parts of our film, our characters mainly stay in one environment, which is the bedroom. We needed to understand the layout so that our environment artist, DeAsia, knew how many props needed to be modeled. These were some preliminary layouts done by DeAsia and Yeonsoo. While many things remained the same, we still made slight changes as production continued!
by Yeonsoo Kim
by DeAsia McMillon
Visual Development
We then had Genesis do some color keys that gave us a sense of how the colors and lighting would look and how it would look at different times of day, as our film starts in the evening/ night and ends in the morning. It also helped to iterate the layout of props by seeing how things look at different locations.
Night Color Key
Day Color Key
by Genesis Otero
3D Environment & Props Modeling
Once we had the bedroom layout and prop placement finalized, it was time for the environment to be blocked out by DeAsia!
by DeAsia McMillon
We now understood how well specific props filled up the bedroom scene to make it feel more lived in, so once we had a list of the total number of props that were needed, DeAsia moved on to modeling and texturing them out!
Storyboards
After narrowing down the idea for the short film's story, characters and environments, our team moved on to storyboards to finalize shot progression and composition, done by our Story Artists, Yeonsoo and Emelie!
by Emelie Gardanier and Yeonsoo Kim
Animatic
While creating the storyboard, we also started compiling an animatic with temp music to understand the beats, editing and shot timing. Here's a side-by-side of our animatic with the final short film!
2D Animation
Approximately one-third of our short film is in 2D, mainly because a lot of people in my team are 2D animators, and I wanted to make sure we're able to utilize their amazing skills in this project! We have two distinct styles of animation, one being a rough, colorful, crayon-like child's drawing style, while the other is a more sketchy, developed black-and-white style. Here's some rough character tests that our animators started out with!
by Genesis Otero
by Emelie Gardanier
For the child's drawing animation, we had the wide crayon drawing scrolling behind the character animation to give the impression of her walking across the meadow.
by Genesis Otero
For the next part of the 2D animation that's black and white, we had certain scenes with a very dynamic and colorful animation done by Emelie that was later composited together by her as well, with 2D animation, clean up, and color by Yeonsoo!
by Emelie Gardanier and Yeonsoo Kim
3D Animation
I was responsible for the 3D animation, so once we had our finalized animatic and the finalized block out of the bedroom environment, I got to work on blocking out the basic movements of the character. For the most part, I followed the animatic exactly. However, there were some places where I decided to change up the shots since certain compositional changes looked better in 3D. Here's a side-by-side of the first block out with the finalized animation!
by Rohit Arora
Look Development
For one of the acts in our film, our character was immersed in a painting. While we had an amazing matte painting done by our background painter, Ethan, we figured it was important also to have the character's textures look painterly. I decided to experiment with the post-process tools within Unreal Engine to achieve this, as working in a real-time engine allows for quicker iterations of how the final look will be achieved.
by Rohit Arora
Butterfly Magic FX
Our short film involved having a magical butterfly enter the bedroom and drive the plot forward. I looked at many references for magical animals, such as Patronus from Harry Potter. I used SideFX Houdini and Redshift to create the FX, and my first pass (left) was a good start. However, I wanted to add some more elements such as a particle trail and a glowing smoke trail to make it more dynamic, and the final version (right), ended up looking better.
Initial FX pass
Final FX pass
by Rohit Arora
Lighting
Once I had the animation finalized, I moved on to prepare for lighting. DeAsia had modeled and textured the props by the time I approached this stage so I could get started. During the 3D part, our film starts in the evening, moves on tonight, and then ends in the morning. This is why I decided to create three separate master lighting files for each time of day so that for each shot, I can save those files and tweak the lighting for each shot.
Evening Lighting
Night Lighting
Day Lighting
by Rohit Arora
When I finished the master lighting for each time of day, I started moving to work on lighting each shot, making slight edits and changes based on the shot's needs and what it focuses on.
by Rohit Arora
Compositing
Since our animation was rendered in Maya with Arnold, and the magic butterfly was in Houdini with Redshift, I had to composite them together in Nuke while also doing things like color correction, depth of field, and adding a sky background.
by Rohit Arora