Making Of
In the Collaborative Project course of Winter of 2020, our group of eLearning animation students at Savannah College of Art and Design joined together to make an animation short within a ten week deadline. Fifteen students from different states and countries came together to not only create an animation for the course but an animation we all could be proud of. Since there were only fifteen of us, many of us had to take on several different roles to complete this animation.
Story
Witchful Thinking was a story that was first presented by Bethany Krupiarz in her idea pitch for the course. Everyone almost immediately fell in love with this adoring story. Originally, the story was about a daughter and her witch grandmother; however, after a few discussions, the story changed and became about a demon father, Lucifer, and his college hybrid witch-demon daughter, Pandora. With the help of Assistant Script Writer, Charley Abrams, and Script Editor, Angela Awada, the heart of the story stayed true.
Lucifer, with his never-ending antics, tries desperately to gain recognition from his college daughter, Pandora. Lucifer tries to achieve this by trying to connect to her through the books she seems so intrigued with. In the end, it is the memory of a simple magical butterfly, representing Pandora’s late witch mother, Celeste, that brings the two together at last.
Production
Our producers, Sneha Peddireddy and Sharnae Roberts, with the help of the heads of each departments, planned out a detailed schedule to keep this animation on track. Granted, this schedule did change at times, usually because we were able to get things completed quicker then anticipated or because we needed to complete the animation before the render farm at SCAD got too busy.
Art Direction
Witchful Thinking is about a loving father struggling to get recognition from his daughter. Most of our crew was proficient in aspects of 3D animation but we also had quite a few skilled 2D artists. We really wanted to choose a style where everyone's skills would shine so we went with a stylized 3D animation with 2D effects.
Character Inspiration
Character Concept
By Angela Awada and Frauke Furch
Cottage Inspiration
Cottage Concept
By Angela Awada,Timothy Albany, and Frauke Furch
Modeling
Bethany Krupiarz was our character modeler - she worked on the characters in Autodesk Maya and zBrush. Charley Abrams was our main environment modeler who created the interior of the cottage. Leah Farner, Frauke Furch, Angela Awada, Sneha Peddireddy, Tj Pollard, David Prevost and Calvin Reid were our asset modelers - they used a combination of software to create assets for the interior of the cottage.
Character Models
By Bethany Krupiarz
Cottage Model
Storyboards/Animatic
The first time we saw our characters really come to life and interact with each other was during the storyboarding process. Throughout the storyboarding, we started to have a better grasp on the characters’ personalities and attitudes. What was really challenging was telling the full story and communicating what we wanted the audience to know without dialogue. We really had to exaggerate and push the poses and facial expressions of our two characters. If the father was contemplating something, his whole body and posture had to be committed to showing him thinking
Character Rigging
We had two riggers for this project - Sharnae Roberts, who did the rigs for both Pandora and Lucifer, and David Prevost, who did the rigs for all three books. Some unique rigging attributes were created for the characters - Lucifer and Pandora's feet have attributes to them, which makes them easier to animate. Their arms can be animated in both FK & IK and their pole vector controllers on the elbows and knees have the option to either follow the arm/foot animation or stay behind.
What makes these character rigs even more unique are their facial rigs. They are made out of joints which also allows the eyes themselves to have attributes to help with blinking.
The last element that makes these rigs intriguing is the simple rig that was installed for secondary motion on Lucifer's Beard and Pandora's hair.
Book Rigging
David Prevost was responsible for rigging the books that Pandora reads in Witchful Thinking. The first challenge was figuring out how to actually make the book work so he removed the pages and started with the spine of the book. Through reworking the model and bending it into a closed book position, he was able to get an idea of where to add the joints.
After mapping out where the pivots go, he created the spine for the book. David Prevost then incorporated the pages into the book. This turned out to be pretty simple since all he had to do was redistribute the painted weights and make sure the pages didn't bunch up when the book was closed.
The final task was to incorporate a loose, movable page into the model. David Prevost experimented on automating the animation for the book, giving it a single control that would open/close the book. He wanted to include the loose page in this automation but due to the fact that the book would be keyed to open at different angles, having the pages keyed to that same angle would not have the effect we were looking for. In the end, the pages, which also had key spacing so the end of the pages can reach the end of the book when open, were animated manually while the book opening/closing is automated.
Previs
The Previsualization process had a couple bumps regarding Scene Sequence match up, timing, and various rig malfunctions. Scene set up went well due to well-prepared staging and any necessary corrections, after first Previs passes were presented, were revised in a timely manner. Any complications during and after Previs production were promptly communicated and quickly resolved with little hindrance to the production schedule.
Previs artists task deployment:
Charley Abrams:
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Cottage staging
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ACT III
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Prop improvising
Leah Farner:
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ACT I
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ACT II
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Prop improvising
Communicated complications and resolutions:
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Rig constraints and skin weights not behaving – Resolve: created documented list of bugs and reported issues to head of rigging department
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ACT I Previs and Scene list shots not matching up – Resolve: reviewed Scene list and revised Previs shots accordingly so shots and story list sync
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Direction of Dad’s broom crash did not match up to direction of designated crash point – Resolve: reanimated shots of dad flying broom in direction of crash point.
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Two different versions of same shot of picture frame falling were included in both ACT II and ACT III – Resolve: Director picked shot with camera shaking during the crash
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Some shots paced too quickly – Resolve: revised dramatic timing of storytelling with regards to potential acting choices and readability
Look Development
Look development was a group effort handled by the art department, Angela Awada, Frauke Furch, and TJ Pollard, with help from the modeling department. For the textures of the assets to match the 2D effects, and painted exterior of our set that we see in the exposition shot, we looked at different references and found inspiration in other animated shorts. The decision was made to make the textures look hand-painted with a lot of textural feeling to it and to keep the shader settings simple. That meant: for every asset, a color map was created, and for some objects, a specular map and some slight specular color variation were added. In addition to that, on some objects we wanted to appear like glass or metal we increased the "metalness" values. With only these three aspects of the shader used, it gave us a clean look that didn’t overwhelm the composition by only giving a hint at photorealistic behavior of the asset interacting with the lights and letting the hand-painted color maps speak for themselves. We used warm, muted colors to get across the coziness of the cottage and have a contrast to the rather cold purple and black color scheme of the characters.
Textured Character Models
Textured Cottage
3D Animation
At the beginning of the project, it was apparent that there was a large group of animators who specialized in 3D; however, a 2D aesthetic was also desired for parts of the film. This choice to combine both mediums helped further contrast the real-life world against the magical realm in "Witchful Thinking." The 3D animation team, which included Charley Abrams, Leah Farner, Eunju Hyun, Sneha Peddireddy, David Prevost, Calvin Reid, and animation director, Alyssa Myers, animated the shots using Maya and worked well together in collaboration so that each scene fit collectively and flowed seamlessly. With regard to body movements, prop placements, and facial expressions, this joint effort by the 3D animators help set the stage for 2D animation as everyone's work was highly crucial in accurately portraying the story.
2D Animation
The challenge we faced for the 2D animations was finding a style that would work nicely with the artwork we made for the film and the texturing of the 3D animations. While they were stylized, we needed them to work with the 3D, not clash. This involved frame-by-frame texturing with a digital painting software that ultimately gave the 2D animations a rough, painterly look to go with the digital paintings created for the textures of the props, characters, and backgrounds.
Sound
The sound effects were created by Sneha Peddireddy, Lorena Mendoza, Tj Pollard, and David Prevost. It was fortunate that we had a couple of team members who were experienced in Sound Design. Due to the time constraint, it was decided that a lot of the story moments would happen off-screen, which required more sounds than what we originally assumed. Lorena had access to a sound lab and was able to create some great foley sounds. It was a bit inconvenient that the rest didn’t have proper recording equipment but we made do with what we had. Some of the software used to create and edit the sound effects were Adobe Audition, Audacity, & Pro Tools. Most of the sound effects were created using Foley but we did use MIDI instruments in Pro Tools to create the ‘shimmering & tinkling’ sound of the magic butterfly.
Music
Witchful Thinking was a phenomenally fun project to work on for Ben as a composer. Since the film doesn't particularly focus around dialog, he was given a lot of freedom to have the music he wrote to create a voice for the world, and the characters. He aimed to develop a full, orchestral fantasy work, that gave extra hints of wonder to the setting.
Most of the music is derived from a main theme that he initially jotted out on piano, but then expanded outward to strings, woodwinds, percussion, and some specialty instruments, like a celeste, and theremin, to add color. Many of the characters had identities framed around a specific instrument, as well. Lucifer, the father, is heavily tinged in piano, while Pandora's angst is featured on the bassoon. The concept of 'magic' is emphasized on the theremin, while the butterfly, and the 'togetherness' of the family is shown on the flute.
The entire score is written in 3/4, with the main theme being a waltz. He wanted something with a nice playfulness, that could transition into more of a sentimental tone, which is really the root of the melody's two primary phrases: a jaunty waltz rhythm, that leads into a more lyrical, harmonious statement. In certain parts of the film, he also got to have some fun with 'mickey-mousing.' Abrupt cymbal crashes to signal Pandora bursting through a door, a harsh timpani hit, as Lucifer wrecks his broom, etc. But there were also other, smaller gestures, like timing notes of a melody to ping right as a character turns, or gets a twinkle in their eye. It's a very precise approach to writing where, if done right, has an impact, but feels so natural, that you don't even notice it.
Lighting
The most challenge for lighting artists was how to manage to finish all shots by the deadline. We had 50 shots, only two lighting artists, but less than two weeks. Fortunately, the animators helped the rendering the shots together so we could finish the render before the deadline. With all the students involved, we could efficiently complete our short film.
Rendering
We chose Arnold renderer because it was already in Autodesk Maya, but also because it allows students to set up lights and render setting quickly. Also, it helps to create beautiful images easily. The lighting team set one master light rig for the interior and apply it to all shots. Therefore, we rotated the lights according to the characters and camera composition of the background, and you were ready to set up the lighting.
Composting/Editing
Composting/editing some of the shots proved to be quite a challenge for our compositer/editer Leah Farner. It was difficult to get all of the different shots to transition to the next. Files became a bit scattered and difficult to manage after sharing and re-sharing composited edits. Overall though, the compositing process worked well, even though the large file format of .exr was rather steep and time consuming for downloads and sharing. Thanks to Frauke Furch, who incorporated all of the 2d matte painting into the shots, which helped extradite the process of editing together our animation.
Conclusion
Communication was well employed throughout production. Everyone’s willingness to observe, share, and communicate is the foundation of this quality production over a considerably limited amount of time to produce an entire short film. Because of the communication, everyone's hard work and dedication to this animation this production has been polished with significant amounts of detail. Overall, the learning outcomes and the final production are a success.
The animation film production of "Witchful Thinking" was a great experience to test our limitations and work together as a team. Together we persevered and helped one another through all of the challenges that we ran into during the creation of "Witchful Thinking". Thanks to all our crew members for the effort and contribution to our animation that we successfully created together in a positive environment that let us learn and grow together.