ABOUT:

'Candle Wick' is a 3D animated short film which was produced within six weeks, entirely remotely, by 2nd year students at Escape Studios in London. It is written by Oliver Gallagher, Muhammed Mansoor & Liam Martin and directed by Oliver Gallagher & Shauna Ludgate. In the below blog I will share my experience as a Producer and a breakdown of the production process. 

'Candle Wick'  is about an adventurous candle living inside the walls of an old house. When a water pipe inside his den started leaking, he found himself needing to go outside and find an item to block it. Being so small, every journey is a danger, even the smallest of steps, but he must risk it all when it comes to saving his home.

SCRIPT & STORYBOARDING:

During the first two weeks our writers & storyboarding team were revising the story and panels and making any necessary changes to ensure we have a working story before we move into production. That process helped us a lot moving forward because during that time we made sure that our cameras and angles were working overall in 3D and didn't have to do any major changes at a later stage.

See the image below for our main 2D animatic panels.

COLOUR SCRIPT:

Our Art Director, Tsvetelina Kumanova, decided to go with colours like purple for the hallway to express the feeling of the unknown, orange and red for Wick's den to show the warmth of his home and finally dark bluish for the basement for its cold and dangerous environment setting.

Check out the images below to see our colour script.

CHARACTER DESIGN:

Oliver Gallagher, the Director of the short, designed Wick with the vision to have a protagonist who looked strong enough and capable of going on adventures but had an easily defined weakness. In our case he is a small, lit candle. He chose warm colours for his clothes like orange and yellow to push the fire aesthetic but also some grey for his hands and feet to make some body parts better distinguishable.

Click out the video below to see Wick's colour aesthetic.

MODELLING & RIGGING:

Wick was entirely modelled and rigged by Tom Perry, our team modeller & rigger. Designing a lit candle was not as easy as we first imagined, and Tom had to learn and use multiple technics in order to give the animators as much control as possible. He achieved that by using a set of key drivers throughout the body controlling its blend shapes as well as sets of optional, more advanced controls, for minute details in the face and body.

Click the video below to see a full character turnaround in different stages.

3D LAYOUT:

Shauna Ludgate, our second Director and 3D Supervisor, was responsible for doing the 3D Layout. It included three different environments, Wick's den, the hallway and the basement, which she built within the first two weeks of the project. On the third week, she passed it on to our modeller & rigger, Tom Perry, to do daily maintenance, future adjustments and troubleshooting while she was supervising animation and doing lighting tests.

Check out the below 3D Layout pictures for multiple views.

REFERENCES:

Knowing the importance of references when animating, the whole team spent a good amount of time researching examples of detailed material for the most realistic look for their shots, as well as acting out their scenes and recording themselves for their animation.

Check the two videos below for some examples of the references we used.

ANIMATION BREAKDOWN:

We were going for a realistic, humanized animation style for Wick, so we made sure that all animators followed the correct steps for an industry standard pipeline to ensure a polished look at the end.

Check out the video below to see the differences in animation between each step, from previz to the final render.

LIGHTING & RENDERING:

Shauna Ludgate, our one-woman army, was also responsible for lighting and setting up all the renders.  We implemented an alembic workflow to transfer animation into her master lighting scenes which included multiple shot setups with the same environments for time efficiency. She also set up all the render layers + specific AOVs, using RedShift, which allowed us to render the backgrounds on their own while waiting for the animation to be finalized. This way we did not only saved time on rendering but also gave us the power to manipulate more things during compositing.

See the two images below for a quick look at our lighting continuity and our render layers/settings.

COMPOSITING:

I was responsible for compositing the short and used NukeX as a preferred software for the results we were aspiring to. Using the right render layers and AOVs offered a few technical and aesthetical advantages such as 1) allowing me to adjust the colour gradient of specific items in the environment by using crypto, 2) manage smooth focus pulls with the Defocus node by using the Z pass and 3) troubleshoot any issues with shadows using rotos. 

Watch the video below to see an example of a frame from Maya and then composited in Nuke.

2D FLAME PASS:

Having a realistic look for the 3D flame is very challenging so Tsvetelina Kumanova decided to do a 2D pass of the flame in After Effects, on top of the 3D mesh, so the edges look a bit more naturally deformed.

Check out the video below to see one of her shots in black and white, combined with the 2D flame pass.

PRODUCTION:

I mainly used Excel for production planning and progress tracking throughout the short and had to create bespoke documents for efficient visual project management. 

See the three images below for the key planning tools we used.

Image 1 - Production Schedule:

The Production Schedule displays all big tasks set with assignees, deadlines, and progress bars in a form of a calendar. This helped the whole team know at glance the stage of production and any pending activity.

Image 2 - Shot Breakdown:

This is a detailed document displaying the different shot numbers, descriptions/script, frame numbers, camera type, transitions, sounds and voiceovers. It would assist the team in different stages of pre-production but mostly when working on the script, storyboarding and 2D animatic.

Image 3 - Shot Plan:

This tool helped us manage all the different stages of production for each shot, from previz to comp. It contained automated drop lists and different status and for each step and was also colour coded to make it easily readable.

PERSONAL REFLECTION:

'Candle Wick' was very challenging and required technical knowledge to manage it. Wick was a moving light source so we needed to be proactive with our rigging process so we don't encounter too many surprises during lighting and rendering. We also dealt with internal conflict throughout the project which was very difficult to handle, especially when we entered production. This is a good representation of the real world because we won’t be able to choose our colleagues when we join the industry. Nonetheless, It taught me how to confidently manage a difficult project when it's out of my comfort zone and how to effectively communicate throughout a project when disagreement is more common than agreement. It provided me with great experiences, technical practice and lessons which I will definitely carry over once I graduate. 

TEAM:

Writers: Oliver Gallagher, Muhammed Mansoor & Liam Martin
Directors: Oliver Gallagher & Shauna Ludgate
Producer: Emmanouil Zervoudakis
Art Director: Tsvetelina Kumanova
Storyboarding: Oliver Gallagher, Chanakan Jeffries, Tsvetelina Kumanova & Aroosa Qureshi
Colour Script: Tsvetelina Kumanova
3D Layout: Shauna Ludgate
Modelling & Texturing: Tom Perry & Shauna Ludgate
Rigging: Tom Perry
2D Artists: Tsvetelina Kumanova, Liam Martin & Chanakan Jeffries
Animation: Muhammed Mansoor, Tsvetelina Kumanova, Liam Martin, Oliver Gallagher, Shauna Ludgate, Aroosa Qureshi, Chanakan Jeffries, David Akinyose, Tom Perry, Emmanouil Zervoudakis & Giada Carnevaletti
Lighting & Rendering: Shauna Ludgate
Compositing: Emmanouil Zervoudakis & Shauna Ludgate
Original Music: Maria Cortes-Monroy
Sound Design: Mihail Sustov
Editing: Liam Martin & Emmanouil Zervoudakis
Voice Actress: Ellie Wills

ABOUT:

'Pet Shop' is an award winning 3D animated TV series trailer. It was produced within six weeks, entirely remotely, by 2nd year students at Escape Studios in London. It is written & directed by Shauna Ludgate and in the below blog I will share my experience as a Producer and a breakdown of the production process.

'Pet Shop' is about the daily life of 4 furry friends waiting to be adopted. Duke is new in the shop and brings hope to the other pets that they will find a home, whilst finding a family within each other. The main story arc of the series is getting the characters adopted whilst causing chaos and making friends. 

SCRIPT & STORYBOARDING:

For the first two weeks, our director, Shauna Ludgate, and the storyboarding team narrowed down the shots and began to plan cameras and draw panels. They had to work closely together to make the vision come to life in a short period of time. This stage was really important for the team to feel confident that we are moving into Previz with a story that works. 

See the image below for our main 2D animatic panels.

COLOUR SCRIPT:

Our Art Director, Tsvetelina Kumanova, decided to go with warm colours like orange and yellow for our day-time shots and a cooler, bluish for our night-time shots.

Check out the images below to see our colour script and lighting moodboard.

CHARACTER DESIGN:

Tsvetelina Kumanova was responsible for doing all the character designs for Bruce. After looking at plenty of fish references, she decided to go with a simple design and warm colours that bring out his calm personality.

Check out the video below to see Bruce's different design stages.

CHARACTER EXPRESSION SHEET:

Shauna Ludgate and Tsvetelina Kumanova decided to create a basic character expression sheet with the storyboarding team to not only to demonstrate the personality of each character but also give an idea of the range of facial movements to our rigger.

Check the image below to see the different character expressions.

MODELLING & RIGGING:

Bruce was entirely modelled and rigged by Tom Perry, our team modeller & rigger. He used a mix of blend shapes and nCloth simulations to give off the effects of the character always being under water. This put less stress on the animators to try and make each fin feel wavy as the simulation engine would take care of it for them, allowing for more focus on his facial animation and core body movement.

Click the video below to see a full character turnaround in different stages.

3D LAYOUT:

Our 3D layout artist, Muhammed Mansoor, began laying down the basics for our pet shop layout, which was passed to Shauna Ludgate for some refining during the 4th week. 

Check out the below 3D Layout pictures.

REFERENCES:

References were an important part of our production process and helped us massively during the animation stage. The team used a mixture of animal references for natural creature behaviours, and live action filmed references for lip syncing and human actions.

Check the two videos below for examples of the references we used during an early stage of animation.

ANIMATION BREAKDOWN:

We were going for a realistic animation style for both animals and humans, so we made sure that all animators started from blocking out their shots, then moving to splining and then finishing their shot with polishing them. By doing that we managed to improve the overall quality of animation for the project.

Check out the video below to see the differences in animation between each step, from previz to the final render.

LIGHTING:

Muhammad Mansoor, our lighting artist, was responsible for setting up all lighting while also helping Shauna Ludgate implement her render layer setup. His basic lighting setup included a key light, a fill light, and a rim light. He also decided to use light linking which allowed him to add more lights which were assigned to light specific items only instead of the whole environment. 

See the image below for a quick look at our colour script.

RENDERING:

Shauna Ludgate constructed a rendering layer system with AOV's, allowing us to render backgrounds, shadows and characters separately. These technical applications didn't only help us be more efficient with our setups and renders but also be proactive and plan our composition in NukeX.

Check out the image below for our render layers and settings.

COMPOSITING:

Shauna Ludgate was also responsible for compositing the final renders together in Nukex. By utilizing all the different render layers and AOVs she was able to adjust the light exposure to ensure consistency between shots, change the colour gradient of specific items in the environment or characters and troubleshoot any shadow issues. 

She used a master comp script which included all twelve shots in a single project file, and we were able to afford that because our scripts were not complicated and heavy. The main nodes she used were shuffles, merges, Zdefocus and grades. We also integrated some 2D drawings of clouds in our first shot, which were drawn by Tsvetelina Kumanova in After Effects and then comped and tracked in Nukex.

Check out the below video to see all the different visuals between stages.

PRODUCTION:

I mainly used Excel to create the production schedule and some smaller documents to help us track the progress of the different stages of each shot as well as managing all our assets and calculating our render times.

See the three images below for the key planning tools we used.

Image 1 - Production Schedule:

The Production Schedule helped the team have a general overview of each task, duration, and progress. All the tasks from the left side of the schedule are displayed on the right side in a form of calendar with the working days marked as blue blocks, known as Gantt Chart.

Image 2 - Shot Plan:

The Shot Plan helped us track the progress of each shot which means tracking the whole process of animation, lighting, rendering and comp. It displayed all the shots, the frame range of each shot, approved cameras, status of the actual animation, lighting etc. Also, it allowed each department to pass on their work to the next one by simply choosing the right action from the drop-down lists.

Image 3 - Render Stats:

The Render Stats displayed rendering data which helped the relevant person understand how long it will take them to render each render layer, each frame, each shot etc. This document took most of its data from the Shot Plan so when animators were updating their shots, this was getting updated automatically as well.

PERSONAL REFLECTION:

'Pet Shop' is my second group project and it was a blast! I had the opportunity to work with some really talented people who showed great spirit and dedication during those 6 weeks. it was challenging but very rewarding. The biggest learning for me, beyond technical skills, was that teamwork and accountability are critical to ensure a successful project! 

THE TEAM:

Director & Writer: Shauna Ludgate
Producer: Emmanouil Zervoudakis
Art Director: Tsvetelina Kumanova
Storyboarding: Shauna Ludgate, Oliver Gallagher, Chanakan Jeffries, Tsvetelina Kumanova & Aroosa Qureshi
Colour Script: Tsvetelina Kumanova
3D Layout: Muhammed Mansoor & Shauna Ludgate
Modelling & Texturing: Tom Perry & Oliver Gallagher
Rigging: Tom Perry
Animation: Muhammed Mansoor, Tsvetelina Kumanova, Liam Martin, Oliver Gallagher, Shauna Ludgate, Aroosa Qureshi, Chanakan Jeffries, David Akinyose, Tom Perry & Derek Fead
Lighting & Rendering: Shauna Ludgate & Muhammed Mansoor
Compositing: Shauna Ludgate
Original Music: Maria Cortes-Monroy
Sound Design: Mihail Sustov
Motion Graphics: Alice McCall
Editing: Liam Martin & Emmanouil Zervoudakis
Voice Acting: Cameron Bier (Duke), Ellie Wills (Bella) & Muhammed Mansoor (Victor)

ABOUT:

'ALMA' is an award winning, master student, 3D animated short film. It was produced within eighteen weeks, entirely remotely, at Escape Studios in London. It is written & directed by Rola Hafez, Francesco Cordari and Alexandra Megerdichian. In the below blog I will share my experience as a Producer and a breakdown of the production process. 

'ALMA' is about following a robot’s daily commute and routine to reflect on human life, aim and purpose.

 

CONCEPT ART:

I only joined the project halfway so I will only be able to share some beautiful initial sketches, our character rig development along with the colour script.

DEVELOPMENT:

As you can see there a clear development of the character which happened both for aesthetic and practical reasons.

COLOUR SCRIPT:

Colour script played a huge role in setting up the right lighting and accurate colour grading during comp.

MOTION CAPTURE:

COMMUNICATION:

Our main platform of commination was Discord which many people often view it as a gamer's tool but it is actually a really interactive and user-friendly platform which allows you to create your own server and channels (text or voice), which contribute to keeping things organized and time efficient for your team. You can also assign different roles to different people so when an artist wants to share their WIP they can tag the appropriate person without distracting other artists. This allowed me to communicate with the team and share documents fast.

In addition to Discord, we used Google Meet for all our dailies and emergency meetings. It allows us to record and save the videos straight on the Google Drive and share it with everyone. That makes things even more simple for us because we are already using Google Drive to store and share files across all workstations. If you decide to create your documents offline in excel, upload them on the GDrive and convert them into Google Sheet like me you will find out that there are issues with it. When using the filtering option with Google Sheet, it does not like certain actions like 'merged cells' for example. 

We also took advantage of Google File Stream which enabled us not only to sync offline files with the online ones instantly but also enables the artists to set their projects on to that and their scenes will be getting updated with a click of a button! We did encounter some issues though like Google File Stream disappearing from our PCs or crashing and having to reinstall or not being able to stop syncing at certain times.

DAILIES STRUCTURE:

As a producer, one of my responsibilities was to coordinate the team (internal and external people), to ensure we keep track of progress and keep to deadlines.

I did that by structuring all dailies based on priorities and availability of people, keeping notes and actions of any meeting, ensuring artists are aware of their tasks and following up for updates throughout the week. This is a template that I created which I was adjusting before every meeting. Every department and every artist have their own dedicated time slots which allows them to spend less time on the call and be more productive with their time. Also, the way everyone addresses feedback is structured so it is easily recorded and better understood.

TEAM BREAKDOWN:

Then, I created a ‘Team Breakdown’ document for anyone looking for quick information about their team members like their name, role, email address and Discord ID. This was important, especially because this project was fully done remotely during COVID and people could not meet face to face to bond and get to know one another. When someone new joins the project, this helped them understand the team dynamic. If you ever joined a team you can surely understand that feeling of being lost on your first day (document not shared due to private information).

PROGRESS TRACKER:

One of my focus areas was to streamline all processes and optimize ways of working using mostly Excel. I created a ’Progress Tracker’ document to ensure all actions are recorded and easily tracked. It gave us the ability to have drop-down lists as data instead of manually typing and the artists to apply filtering actions (by department, name, status etc.) which helped them navigate to their pending actions much quicker. 

PRODUCTION SCHEDULE:

After that, I created a new 'Production Schedule' with the purpose of displaying the production data in a more visual way. Folders and sub-folders are included so the user can choose how simple or how complicated they want it to be. This document was to help the production team have a general overview of each task, duration and progress. All the tasks from the left side of the schedule are displayed on the right side in a form of calendar with the working days marked as blue blocks, known as Gantt Chart. This type of charts is highly valued by people who are doing Project Management. Even though It contained the right information, I found it quite challenging sometimes to quickly understand what is pending so I'll need to experiment a bit further with this type of schedule.

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SHOT PLAN:

Then, I created a ‘'Shot Plan'’ to track the progress of each shot which means tracking the whole process of animation, ABC export, lighting, rendering and comp. It displays all the shots, the frame range of each shot, approved cameras, mocap versions, offsets and status of the actual animation (Blocking, Splining etc) which are key for the animators. Also, it allows each department to pass on their work to the next one by simply choosing the right action from the drop-down lists. For example: If animation exported the ABC, the animator would select ''Pending Check'' and the lighting artist will choose ''In Progress''. If there is an issue with the ABC, the Lighting artist will change it to 'Blocked' and the ABC will turn into ''Re-Export''.  I also placed comment boxes for each department so they can communicate with each other and avoid mistakes during export.

ASSET TRACKER:

In addition, I created an ‘Asset Tracker’ to track the progress of all our assets and make sure all artists are working with the latest geo and rigs. It focuses solely on asset versions, stages and deadlines. This document is feeding data to the ''Production Schedule'' so if we need to change something here the other document is getting updated as well. This is the bible for riggers and modelers in a sense. One wrong asset version can lead us to hours of troubleshooting. I have made folders once more to allow the user to make it simpler if they choose to. In all assets and shots, I gave an option for the status to be ''CBB'', which means 'Could Be Better' and a comment section about things to improve so If at the end of the production we still have time, we can always go back and work on them.

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RENDER STATS:

As a last document, I created the ''Render Stats'' which displays rendering data which helps the relevant person understand how long it will take them to render each render layer, each frame, each shot etc. This document is taking most of its data from the ''Shot Plan'' so when animators are updating their shots, this is getting updated as well. I made it fully automated so the person doing rendering can change the input data and get the correct results in all cells. For example, if someone changes the ''PC Count'', all the rendering times will adapt to the new number. The total render time at the top right-side states 52.22 hours for 7 machines rendering, if 2 machines drop out and we have 5, the rendering time for each frame, each shot and the total time will get updated correctly. Having said that, all the cells are using the same kind of logic (FYI: The ID and the password are substitutes).

We used Zero Tier and AFANASY (CGRU) to manage our online renderfarm which is a massive help when rendering a big project. An online renderfarm basically allows you to create a network of workstations and have them rendering your short movie all together at the same time. It is the first time I am working with one and if you decide to try it out you will definitely need someone to maintain it and keep the renders active, known as ''Renderfarm TD''. It will require some knowledge but it is a powerful tool so I would strongly recommend it.  

An important task during rendering is to assign someone to be checking the renders as they come through so if there is a mistake, they can let the appropriate person know so they can stop rendering, fix the issue and restart the render instead of waste a day on something unusable. This is called ''render rattling''.

The choices for renderers are plenty, for example Arnold, Renderman, Redshift, Octane, V-Ray etc. Some people would use Arnold because of the realism it provides, but that comes with a cost, heavy rendering times. We went with Redshift without compromising much on quality but surely saving weeks of rendering time! One more thing to keep in mind is to decide on your rendering software on an early stage and make sure that all other renderers in Maya are not active. They always store data in assets and it's really time consuming to remove or convert them, especially on a later stage in production.

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS:

Overall, this was an incredible learning opportunity for me as I am not only learning from what I am doing but also from the leads in each department. 3 key reflections and learnings:

1. Having a dedicated team is paramount to complete a project successfully. ''If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.'' Ed Catmull (Creativity Inc). This project did not just have a great story, but It also had a great team. It would not have been possible without effective communication and dedication from everyone.
2. To successfully support a project as a producer you must continue to improve your processes and adapt them as you go. I had to learn to continuously to seek feedback from my team and tutor regarding my work and how to best support them. This allowed me to create processes to keep track of all stages, actions and deadlines but most importantly to streamline work and reduce friction so the artists in the team could focus on their creative tasks.
3. Make it visual, keep it simple and automate it as much as possible. As a producer I needed to ensure anyone could see the progress at glance and at any stage. Using colours in my trackers, graph and visual is definitely something I had to include and will continue to do going forward. The trackers and all processes also need to be simple and effective. The more complicated the less effective I found my processes especially since most project tracking tools where manual and not using a project management software like Shotgun or Ftrack. To the last point about automation, using a project management tool usually solves it but if you have to use tools like excel or google sheet like I did, definitely invest some time to automate it to make it easier and more intuitive to use. 

Finally, a massive thank you and congratulation to all who were part of this project! Originally this was a 3-people project, and it was so beautifully developed that 20+ people got involved. This wouldn't be possible without the help of all these people that supported with concept art, modelling, texturing, animation, comp, music, sound effects etc. Amedeo Beretta, Escape Studios tutor, supervised the project which also played a big part in its success. His guidance and hands-on leadership placed this project on a successful path.

TEAM: 

- Director & Writer / Rola Hafez, Francesco Cordari & Alexandra Megerdichian 

- Executive Producer & Animation Director / Amedeo Beretta 

- Producer / Emmanouil Zervoudakis & Rola Hafez

- Supervising TD / Francesco Cordari 

- Assistant TD / Paolo Amadini 

- Concept Art / Paloma Zhu 

- Storyboarding / Austin Hill 

- Colour Script / Jessica Elias Lopez & Francesco Cordari 

- MoCap Performance / Jake Lee 

- Modelling & Texturing / Francesco Cordari & Alexandra Megerdichian 

- Rigging / Piotr Noworyta 

- Animation / Rola Hafez, Samantha Maiolo, Jake Lee & Paolo Amadini 

- Lighting & Rendering / Francesco Cordari 

- Compositing / Amedeo Beretta

- Original Music / Maria Cortes-Monroy 

- Sound Design / Mihail Sustov 

- Motion Graphics / Alice McCall 

- Editing / Rola Hafez

SHORT BREAKDOWN IN VIDEO: