Production Recap April 17th to 28th

Lately on Pet Projects…

The goal of those two weeks was clear: wrap up the biggest assets in modeling and rigging so animation, shading and lighting could move more freely. The assets are done (soon), long live the shots!

Beau spent most of his time on the Rocket, both Interior and Exterior. Vivien provided additional designs for details Rik pointed out - some things you can only see once layout is done. Adding some levers here and there, working on the distressed version of the Rocket Exterior... But other smaller props also needed Beau's attention, as all shots are equal in the eyes of a director. Ok, maybe that's not entirely true, but one thing is for sure: in the eyes of a producer, every shot equally has to go through the process, bon gré ou mal gré (willy-nilly).

Julien joined back on the effort to work on the barn. As every spaceship story needs a base to take off from, our Cat and Dog duo needed to come from somewehere. Inspired by barns from North American farmlands, we wanted to try a simpler treatment to the hay and set dressing.

The Cat finally moves, thanks to Demeter's hard work on that cartoon rig, and Pablo's relentless tests-feedback loop. This allowed our two animators to finally have some shots done and approved, to the delight of our lighters (pun intended, obviously) and our director.

Andy lost no time and went through many shots of the second sequence, with a clear goal in mind: have the seq020 fully lit by the beginning of May. This sometimes meant setting things up on the layout version, which is a common process - as animation will get worked on, the lighting shot will update and only need final tweaks. Trying to work smart, and not too hard!

Obviously, to light is to need shading. Simon continued on his set up and implemented a stylized toon shading method to add to our lighting tools. Last but not least, he was able to do a quick initial shading pass on the cat.

Hjalti is now on a break after many weeks of hard work on layout - it paid off, all shots are done and Rik can now go over them for a continuity pass. Then, he should join on the animation effort... to be confirmed.

Pet Projects is currently in production and the progress can be followed here on the Blender Studio website.

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