Production Logs

This week I experimented with shading for the spiderweb and started working on UV unwrapping the trees for the whack-a-mole set. I also did some other small todos and worked some more on content for geometry nodes.

This week I worked on more important props for the Rextoria sequence of the film.

This week Rik and I continued working on the Rextoria sequence

Completed all the high priority items requested for the Rextoria sequence, ready for the next stages; rigging, surfacing, grooming. Remaining Victoria retopo items in progress. It was decided to remove the net top, net skirt, and gloves from the final Victoria model due to night scene readability.

Not my most visually interesting week as I spent most of it coding, but at least the Sprite got a whole bunch of polish!

In stark contrast to the previous week, this week I worked on a hundred little things on a hundred little rigs, based on animator feedback. Also gave the chunky snail a very quick rig.

This week I explored the cocoon that Vicky gets trapped in. It went from very fluffy to very glue-y!

This week I was mostly working on the shading for some of the animals that we are going to need in the shots that we are working on first. For the spider that included a lot of fur and for the big snail that meant making it ooze.

This week I started working on a bunch of props, mainly related to the snacks and other consumables the teenagers are using. The main problem to solve here was to compare the sizes of props with the proportions of characters that will be interacting with them, and then adjusting the props to that.

Victoria retopology in progress, continuing the high priority items requested for the Rextoria sequence, completed hair, dress, three belts, and earrings.

Rik and I worked in the Rextoria sequence all the new shot are on color to the last version we had at the end of the week

Apart from some followup tasks on the animal characters I mainly worked on the environment assets for the Slingshot tree. Starting with Thursday I live streamed and further worked on the plants assets, stylising the work of Andy further and creating more variations to scatter around in the sets.

I had time and space to (pretty much) fully work on the test shot with Ellie: 'Bird Spotting'. This test shot has been made for exploration purposes of Ellie, but will also end up in the actual movie. It is, in fact the first time we see Ellie act and speak. How do her expressions hold up in an performance piece? This shot also had a great shift in emotion, where there's a great opportunity to push for cartoony 'smears'. Ellie's rig is easy to work with and this will show us how Ellie can be portrayed as the protagonist of the movie.

The "whack-a-mole" set was the main focus for me this week. The spiderweb which captures Victoria has been started. Further, additional trees were added in the near background behind the characters. The set now awaits proper UV unwrapping of the trees, more spider webs and better materials.

Started Victoria retopology, following the high priority items requested for the Rextoria sequence, completed boots and legs.

This week was spent on prop design. All the salty snacks and small assets like the beer and hair spray can got a fake brand name and a first design pass.

This week I finished the shading of the snail addressing the remaining notes that I had. I also finalized the whole color library setup for the characters and prepared shading on the spider by including the color palette for the animals in the library. Other than that I did a quick shading transfer to the updated Sprite character and worked on some exciting new things for geometry nodes.

An unusually focused week where I managed to mostly finish the initial body+face rig our new retopo'd Sprite.

The last character tasks for me were wrapped up. I did and finished the sculpt and retopology of the chunky snail live on YouTube. The rest of the animal characters were retopologized as well and are ready for further rigging & shading. To put a nice bow on top I am also uploading all the .blend files for the characters that I created.

The work on the "Whack-a-mole" set continues. I detailed the tree trunks and joined the roots to them. The trees are now set up with branches and a lower canopy (only modeled what is seen from the camera perspective). Some assets have already been scattered and there is preliminary shading, but that's the plan for the coming week(s)!

I worked on designing the spider webs and the general mood and composition of the set.

Continuing the previous week's timelapse of Sprite's head and torso, and Sprite's eyes the week before last, this week concludes Sprite's retopology with a 9-part timelapse series finale.

This week I integrated the color library I showed last week into the shaders of the characters, did a first shading pass on our snail character and rendered out Rik's pose for Ellie. Other than that I also spent some time on fixing some pipeline related issues and finishing up a nice sample file for geometry nodes.

Last week I started on a test shot with Ellie. This shot will ultimately end up in the movie, however the voice of Ellie is still a temporary one. But in order to find her character I found it's a good time to see her moving and acting so we all get a sense of who she is and who she could be. Next to that I tested a bunch of animal rigs, including the spider that will be cute in the beginning and evil towards the end.

this week I worked on some bird shots, trying to define the movement

This week was full of miscellanea like some snail feedback, vicky hair particle troubleshooting, pipeline addon troubleshooting, boring paperwork and other fun stuff, but most importantly, I rigged a li'l Spider!