End of the Vine

This semester I was able to volunteer for a BFA final short film project for the Adobe Think Tank called End of the Vine directed by Megan Lawton and Megan Hart.  It was such a great experience to work and learn from the graduating class.  It was a great introduction into how a short film progresses and collaboration.  I just wanted to share some interesting facts about the film because it went through so many changes in such a quick amount of time.

When I came onto the project, the graduating class had already been working on the storyboards and idea for this thing for a whole semester.  Back then it was called Pillars of Hope, and the BFA class was working tirelessly on getting the story and storyboards to final.  Coming onto the film, we all assumed it would be animated in 2D because most films at San Jose State have been.
Introducing Judy!

Our lovable lonely scientist, who out to save the world from a massive hunger crisis.

The storyboards hadn't been set yet so for most of the semester we ended up doing a lot of pre-viz stuff. 

Final Backgrounds from Dan Galliger for the beginning and the end of the film.

As an animator coming onto the team, I didn't really have a job yet, so I started sketching and getting the feel for the character.

Soon the boards were slowly getting more and more finalized. Megan Lawton and Megan Hart our directors did an amazing job on getting fixes for the boards right away despite the teachers constant critiques.

At one point, we thought, Hey! we should do this film in 3D...... we had a great team for it, Jared Mills, an amazing 3D modeler; Nick Marshall and Jacob Baker, two wonderful 3D animators, and a host of younger classmen working already in 3D.  So we went for it!

Jared Mills did an amazing job modeling Judy's lab as well as rigging Judy and the Caterpillar.

The team figured out that the tone for the film would be Film Noir themed and they 

built a physical model and lit it for reference.

Once the storyboards got finalized we were off on the animation! With only about 2.5 months left in the semester and till the due date, we rushed to get all the 3D animation done and ready to render in a timely manner.

Here's the full reference for the film that I had to do along with a couple other animators: 

And the Shot Progression:


Luckily we got it done in time and the BFA class was able to show it to Adobe by the due date.  The graduating class on the this project really blew me away, it taught be a lot about what to do and what not to do now that I'm going to be part of the graduating class.  I'm so happy that we accomplished a 3D rendered film in such a short amount of time.

And here is the final film: