CG Animated Short

Running Time - 4 minutes 10 seconds
Duration - 16 weeks
Production -
- 7 Characters
- 18 scenes
- 55 shots
- 21 sets
- 50+ assets
Software -
- Maya
- Brush
- Substance Painter
- Photoshop
- Procreate
- Premiere Pro
- After Effects
Responsible for these aspects of production
- Concept + Design
- 3D Modeler
- Texturing + Surfacing
- Lighting + Rendering
- Animation
- Post Production + Editing
Sound Mixing/Sound Design - Chollie Records
Short Film - Complete
Concept - Continued Development
- Independently produce a CG Animated Short
- Develop an original concept and character
- Explore a new stylistic approach to character design and environment

Story Development

Logline

In a forest, where the animals change color to indicate the change in season, the humans living among them use magic to transform the rest of the forest.

Synopsis

While traversing through the forest, a fox experiences a color change indicating the beginning of autumn. The fox quickly finds his way to a mailbox made to alert the human village that lives within the treetops. The villagers utilize the forest magic and light stones to set into motion a system of manmade mechanisms to begin the color transformation for the rest of the forest. Tree by tree, the villagers make their way to the ends of the forest until the transformation to autumn is complete and their forest friends are camouflaged once again.

The concept for this film centers around the idea of changing the seasons through human intervention. The environment, animals, and magic system are all impacted by the human characters and their interaction with the world around them.

The story within the animated short is a small portion of a larger concept. The development of this concept is still being expanded upon.

The story went through several iterations. Here are some early thumbnail sketches and the first version of the animatic and script.

Script

Environment Concept + Design

Story Setting -

The story takes place in a forest with latent magic. There is a village of treehouses high up amongst the treetops.

Key Elements -

large trees
thick foliage
treehouses
human inventions + infrastructure (mailbox, rope bridges, waterwheel, etc)
magic elements (light stones)
change in season + color

The forest environment made it necessary to have a variety of layouts to account for the characters moving through the space. The placement of the trees and foliage helped force perspective and draw focal points in each scene.

The forest floor scenes were designed to stay organic, with the human elements gradually becoming more visible as the story progresses. The environment design for the village scenes become progressively dominated by human infrastructure as the film introduces the village and human characters.

The tree houses, platforms, and bridges are built around nature. This was a design choice made to align with the villagers respect for the forest and their desire not to disrupt its natural growth.

Modeling + Layout

autumn color palette

summer color palette

Textures + Color Design

Backgrounds were also painted to fill in the empty space in different scenes.

Many textures were painted by hand using procreate. The A lot of the infrastructure for the village was painted to give the allusion of wood to blend into the forest.

Character Designs - Forest Animals

There are 4 animal characters. They were designed to reflect their environment. Several of them have leaves instead of fur and their colors mirror the change in season.

Fun Fact - Originally there was supposed to be a bear but he was ultimately replaced with the owl character.

There are three human characters that represent the villagers in the film. Riley, Jackson, and Tyler are young members of the village and have close relationships with the animals of the forest. They each wear boots and fingerless gloves designed to traverse the forests.

Another Fun Fact - Jackson and Tyler were originally designed to be twins! Ultimately it was decided to make them completely unrelated and unique.