Production Logs

This week I worked on 4 shots in Ritual. They are some fun shots because all the characters are running around and panicking. I finished working on 2 and still working on the others

This week animation team finished the Ritual sequence!!!

This week we officially got shots done on the last big sequence: Grove. Until the very end of animation production we'll work on this sequence. Some really fun stuff in here where the group is littering and demolishing the forest, with ugly consequences... Keep an eye out on this sequence for the following weeks to see it progress :)

These last two weeks were quite busy. Some more tweaks to Phil's shading, more new character shading for the butterfly, the ladybug and Elder Sprite and a whole lot of prop shading, from Spriteberries to the bloddy shoe.

The past 2 weeks I've wrapped up the work on the forest set for the first and last shot of the movie. The lighting and clouds will be refined by Andy & Simon. The Sprite parade also got a lot of work and has a full lineup of rigged character now.

This week I lit the first shot of 010_intro which was a bit tricky because it had to be matched up with the inside of the forest. Since Elder Sprite was getting more refined in shading, I also set up the shots in 030_village where he gets introduced to the audience.

This week I was mainly focused on the shading of Phil. I managed to address that (including the distressed version) from start to finish and I expect only minor tweaks to be necessary once Andy is back to give his feedback. I was also partially busy with another geometry nodes workshop taking place where we were discussing the re-design of the attribute workflow. That was very exciting and I'm quite happy with the outcome!

This week I made some more tweaks to existing sets and props but also started my work on the set for the first & last shot of the film.

This week I've been polishing and putting the final touch's on a few shots. Really enjoyed working on the 30_200 with Elder Sprite, but now its time to move on to the next shots. Let's get it!

This week I made a second episode for the CloudRig "documentation series" (because calling it a tutorial series somehow doesn't feel right), while trying to handle whatever Sprite Fright related tasks are still thrown at me, such as reporting some new bugs that the animators are finding.

Snacks is almost done in terms of lighting and set dressing. Aside lighting shots there will be a small article on the use of lights in Sprite Fright for which I made some examples. My goal is to wrap Snacks up and continue with the Intro sequence.

I wrapped up shading with distressed version on Jay, did some wetness FX for Jay when he is drowning, finally addressed the shading of the Yew tree set and finished up the melting Sprites FX on the remaining shots of the Snacks sequence. Apart from that there were just a couple of other smaller tweaks and issues to address.

This week the team has been working hard on 3 sequences at the same time. Monica has finished her shot on 'Intro' which means that one is a wrap! Daniella, Gerard, Ruth and Mack have been working on 'Village'. Marti and Rik have started on 'Ritual'. You can see the progress here.

Almost all props are done and the mains sets have been dressed for all animation work and lighting.

Among other sets and sequences I was mainly wrapping up some work on the Sprite Village Set and various props that are needed for the Ritual sequence.

This week I was gone for two days but besides the usual bug hunting I managed to mostly wrap up Jay in shading for the sequences that are currently being rendered.

This week almost all the animators have jumped to village. Marti, Dani, Pablo, Ruth, Mack and me are currently working on that sequence! It's nice to see that sequence being finished. Next to that I also jumped again on nightfall to add Phil sleeping on the first shot and do some tweaks when Ellie turns with the flashlight.

This week I started lighting on the first scene of the film: 010_intro! I continued with fluid simulation and lighting on 120_drown and did set dressing and lighting on 090_yew which should hopefully be completed next week!

With no more Sprite Fright characters to rig, these past couple weeks I started focusing on developing CloudRig, to improve its UI and code design and add some new features, in preparation for a tutorial series about it.

This week we almost wrapped up the first sequence of the movie. We have 1 more shot to work on and we're very excited to see this sequence being lit. This sequence has been tackled by Pablo Fournier, Dani Aviles and Monica Eggert. Next to that i've been experimenting with additional effects with the Grease Pencil tool, covering the splashing of the snail in the first shot.

My week was composed of preparing the Nightfall sequence for final rendering and lighting the Snacks sequence. The process of lighting Snacks went steadily and we made some good progress. My goal is to finish Snacks before the end of the week.