Bachelorproject 2011: A New Home

The Project for my Bachelorthesis was the animated shortmovie "a new home".
The Bachelorthesis was about Art Direction, Storytelling, Characterdesign, Setdesign and Lookdevelopment.

the story

The little creature Eeli is saved from a building site by the tinkerer and inventor Egon. Egon takes him to his workshop, where he places him in a flower pot. After Eeli has overcome his anxiety, Egon teaches him how to repair things and they become friends. But one day they work on a TV and Eeli is suddenly placed in front of a Movie about Nature.He realizes how much in fact he is missing Nature and he sadly gets back into the flowerpot. Egon is sorry and thinks about how to help Eeli: He builds a roofgarden on top of his house. Eeli is overwhelmed and they spend a lot of cheerfull time up there. However Eeli takes a lot of thoughtful glances over the roofs of the city.

Characterdesign Elf Eeli

The Characterdesign for "Eeli" began with a wide variety of scribbles, before we decided on where to go with him.

The we decided on the "leafhead" design...

... and developed the characters full apearence

When Eeli was modelled, first he was coloured in mint and dark green, but i realized, that he was young, so his colours should fit a younger plant. The Texturation of the leavehair was quite easy, but his bodytextures were quite demanding, as for he shoul be half plant and half humanoid creature.

Eelis was designed, as if he would be a living leave or plant. For this, I painted his Bodytexture with leaves in a way, thei were appearing like human bloodlines. His feet, arms and upper body was designed with a lot of freckles, which may be from plants or animals.

...and this is how the 3D modell looked with the final texture:

 

 

 

 

Characterdesign Grampa Egon

The Second Character from the bachelorthesis was Grampa Egon. At the beginning he was more a mechanic but later on he became some kind of creative tinkerer.

 

 

Important for Egons design were especially his head and his hands, as they would be quite large in the pictures because of Egons and Eelis relation of size.

This is why the hand and facetexture got a lot of extra attention ;)

 

 

 

Setdesign

The major Set from "A New Home" was Egons Cabin.

 

 

The Setdesign was done with a lot of research and long lists of Objects. To give the Cabin more personal feeling, there were a lot of "personal objects" and "profession-related-objects" placed in the Set, for example a familypicture or a newspaper article about Egon.

 

 

The second 3D Set is the roofgarden in the last 3D Shot.

 

Compositing of the 3D-shots

For the 3D shots the usual passes were rendered and composed in After Effects. The most difficult part was the additional visible light, which was added in After Effects.

 

Compositing of the 2D shots

The Images for the Intro and Outro were drawn with ink, scanned and finaly cleaned in Photoshop.

The color was created by shooting ink with injection needles on wet paper.

 

 

 

Final 2D Shot: