At TJ we’re not ones to rest on our laurels, we are constantly looking to challenge our team’s skill sets and push the boundaries of our technical capabilities. We try and keep everyone’s creative juices flowing by offering our creatives and artists the opportunity to work on various internal projects- with no constraints dictating the outcome. With that said, in the lead-up to Easter, we decided to create an animation that would encompass the time of year and build on our 3D character repertoire. This animation sees our characters, chick and dragon, in a rather unusual situation…
The story follows our little chick on his journey in the pursuit of happiness but who encounters some hurdles along the way…
The two main characters were designed to be very simple, cartoony and lovable, giving us more control for creating more appealing motion and striking visuals. After some brainstorming, we created a rough storyboard was created along with a character design sheet. This helped create the colour palette that would dictate the next stage of concept development.
Once the storyboard was finalised, we moved into the 2D animatic phase, where we massaged the timing and storytelling until it conveyed the feel and mood we wanted from it. The next stage, we modelled the chicken and dragon in 3D, rigging the skeleton of both characters, texturing and shading them to match the original 2D character design.
Bringing the animation, rendering and compositing together quickly followed. Working with sound design studio Stimmung on a playful and catchy score- and a short was born.Taylor James, 9 years ago
