The Gift - 3D short film WIP thread
Hello Polycounters!
This is team DuOwls writing. We've been lurking the forums for quite some time and finally decided to create a thread for our own project.
We are two students, focussing on 3D art and animation, and we're currently working on a small short film for university. We'd love to get some feedback and critique on our work in progress stuff and your opinions on our work so far!
So first of all some info about the idea itself (sorry, this will be a long post - pictures at the end
)
Plot
Mia is a 6 years old girl, living with her single mother and a young cat. Its the night before her mothers birthday and Mia is sitting in her room, looking at her mothers present: a small, handpainted cup. When the cat, Lino, enters the room and wants to play with her, she pushes the cat aside, afraid it might break the cup and Mia is not really interested in playing with her. A few seconds later, Mias mother calls her for dinner and she leaves, the cup standing near the edge of the desk.
Some time later she returns to her room to find it in a mess. The cat threw most of her painting brushes and tools onto the ground, standing on the desk, watching her. When she tries to shoo the cat, it makes a quick move and hits the cup. The cup falls and shatters to tiny pieces.
The present is ruined and even though Mia tries to fix it, it wont hold together and doesnt look good. Wandering around her room aimlessly, she cant think of anything else she could possibly give her mum for her birthday and sits down on the floor near her bed. Glancing under her bed, she discovers a small empty box and finally has an idea.
In the next morning when she wakes up she notices that she is late for breakfast. She grabs the box quickly and runs to the door to leave the room. As she opens the door, her mother is standing on the other side about to look for her daughter. Mia pulls her to the bed to hand the box over to her mother.
When she opens it, she finds it nearly empty, except for a small piece of paper with some strokes (for counting) on it. Wondering what kind of a strange present this is, she questions her daughter about it, who starts to explain what shes been doing all night.
In a flashback, one can see her, blowing heart shaped kisses into the air, catching them with her tiny hands and putting them into the empty box. Whenever a new kiss lands in the box, she adds a stroke on the paper, counting each of them. In the end, when theres no more space left on her paper, she places the list of kisses into the box and closes it- her present is a box full of love and kisses.
So this is basically the story were trying to realize. Well possible change certain things, especially if we should run into trouble with time or
technical issues or something like that
Right now were planning to build only the childs room in 3D and maybe a small floor part if necessary.
Art
Were going for a stylized look, bright, friendly, round shapes.
Please take a look at our concepts for environment and characters! (Neither of us are great illustrators, so they are more like design concepts than illustrations.)
Concept for Mias room. Sure, its a girls room, but we didnt want to fall for the pink colour cliché and decided to add some green. Wed also like to give her a dinosaur themed room - dino waste basket, dino stuffed toys, aso.
The blue wall will be replaced by a jungle wall painting!
A second concept for Mias room. Same room, more objects. What do you think about this one? Too many objects?
( We hope that well manage to build most of them )
Characters
Mia
Concept for Mia. Her colours should work with her room.
Mother
Concept for Mias mother Delia.
Cat
The young and mischievous cat. Hopefully, the eyebrows will make it easier to give him more personality and character.
3D
We dont have much 3D right now, just finished planning and concepting
But please take a look at the mothers sculpt!
Wed love to get feedback on the WIP stuff. Especially on whether you notice flaws in design or idea and of course on the 3D stuff we have so far.
This is team DuOwls writing. We've been lurking the forums for quite some time and finally decided to create a thread for our own project.
We are two students, focussing on 3D art and animation, and we're currently working on a small short film for university. We'd love to get some feedback and critique on our work in progress stuff and your opinions on our work so far!
So first of all some info about the idea itself (sorry, this will be a long post - pictures at the end
)Plot
Mia is a 6 years old girl, living with her single mother and a young cat. Its the night before her mothers birthday and Mia is sitting in her room, looking at her mothers present: a small, handpainted cup. When the cat, Lino, enters the room and wants to play with her, she pushes the cat aside, afraid it might break the cup and Mia is not really interested in playing with her. A few seconds later, Mias mother calls her for dinner and she leaves, the cup standing near the edge of the desk.
Some time later she returns to her room to find it in a mess. The cat threw most of her painting brushes and tools onto the ground, standing on the desk, watching her. When she tries to shoo the cat, it makes a quick move and hits the cup. The cup falls and shatters to tiny pieces.
The present is ruined and even though Mia tries to fix it, it wont hold together and doesnt look good. Wandering around her room aimlessly, she cant think of anything else she could possibly give her mum for her birthday and sits down on the floor near her bed. Glancing under her bed, she discovers a small empty box and finally has an idea.
In the next morning when she wakes up she notices that she is late for breakfast. She grabs the box quickly and runs to the door to leave the room. As she opens the door, her mother is standing on the other side about to look for her daughter. Mia pulls her to the bed to hand the box over to her mother.
When she opens it, she finds it nearly empty, except for a small piece of paper with some strokes (for counting) on it. Wondering what kind of a strange present this is, she questions her daughter about it, who starts to explain what shes been doing all night.
In a flashback, one can see her, blowing heart shaped kisses into the air, catching them with her tiny hands and putting them into the empty box. Whenever a new kiss lands in the box, she adds a stroke on the paper, counting each of them. In the end, when theres no more space left on her paper, she places the list of kisses into the box and closes it- her present is a box full of love and kisses.
So this is basically the story were trying to realize. Well possible change certain things, especially if we should run into trouble with time or
technical issues or something like that
Right now were planning to build only the childs room in 3D and maybe a small floor part if necessary.
Art
Were going for a stylized look, bright, friendly, round shapes.
Please take a look at our concepts for environment and characters! (Neither of us are great illustrators, so they are more like design concepts than illustrations.)
Concept for Mias room. Sure, its a girls room, but we didnt want to fall for the pink colour cliché and decided to add some green. Wed also like to give her a dinosaur themed room - dino waste basket, dino stuffed toys, aso.
The blue wall will be replaced by a jungle wall painting!
A second concept for Mias room. Same room, more objects. What do you think about this one? Too many objects?
( We hope that well manage to build most of them
)Characters
Mia
Concept for Mia. Her colours should work with her room.
Mother
Concept for Mias mother Delia.
Cat
The young and mischievous cat. Hopefully, the eyebrows will make it easier to give him more personality and character.
3D
We dont have much 3D right now, just finished planning and concepting
But please take a look at the mothers sculpt!
Wed love to get feedback on the WIP stuff. Especially on whether you notice flaws in design or idea and of course on the 3D stuff we have so far.
Replies
Critique:
- I feel the mother has awesome style and the execution of the sculpt is fantastic! Amazing work on everything regarding that character.
- I think you guys really need to take a step back and really do some solid story boarding if you havent already. Really plan out the shots you want to create, take into account of lighting, spacial execution regarding background/room/surrounding objects/DoF/color schemes. With a solid storyboard and some mock up 2D sketches to get an idea of where you want to go, should really help with the design aspect of the room, how you feel the characters work in the scene with style and such, scale for objects, and what you need in terms of 3D assets.
- The little girl's design makes her feel much more mature and much older than 6yrs old. I feel like shes just a short adult with that body type, more realistic body proportions than most children found in stylized shorts/animation, as well as just a super mature face for a 6yr old. I would take another pass on her design to make her clearly read her age even in a 2-3 second single shot. You need to never question her age, right now, I would say shes much older than 6 at a quick glance comparing her to her mother's body style.
Add3r:
Jep, we have a storyboard, just haven't posted it yet. We're still working on it and will share it rather soon.
We'll also check up on how we can improve the child's design or maybe do a quick concept sculpt to see, whether her body shape works or not. Thanks for sharing your opinion on her design!
___________________
We aren't very experienced with creating art for cinematics yet and don't know how high the tri-count for the complete scene could be. For what tri-count should we aim for the mother's retopology?
First of all here's the link to the completed storyboard.
http://vimeo.com/92083767
We haven't decided yet on whether we'll keep the girl's design the way it is or not, so the storyboard still features her original design.
We have also been working on the lowpoly mesh for the mother and her textures. Feedback is very welcome as always