Latest on Sprite Fright

This week I worked on various assets like Sprite teeth shapes and props but mainly I was occupied with Blender development.

This week was split between working on CloudRig, addressing feedback and new features on the Sprite, and then getting started with rigging Victoria (neck down).

This is the updated week version of the rextoria sequence

Completed Victoria's hair and eyes, upper body is in progress. Created Sprite's alternate 'evil eyebrows'.

This week I looked into the spiderweb in terms of material and shading for additional layers to make it more dimensional and fluffy. Also I created procedural variations for the salty snacks with geometry nodes to give some some variety, as there are going to be several of them in single shots.

Last week was mostly animating on shots in the rextoria sequence. These updates are included in the edit uploaded by Pablo Fournier. Next to that I tested some sprite expressions that you can check here. Matthew decided to add 'sharp' teeth to the sprites to add to the scary look of these evil creatures.

Final paintwork on the Sprite village got done and a quick prop design got added to the pile of prop designs ready to go further down the pipeline

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.