Sazacat Animation

Texturing and rendering took more than expected, but finally here it is!

And here is the progress so far.

As soon as the guide soundtrack was assembled together I finally started animating the whole thing.
Once started I found that that my plans couldn’t match the reality of what I had: the number of the shots was too approximative because I didn’t thought about the camera.
Even avoiding strange movement ( I was advised against horrible 3d camera movements) I needed to use the camera as a device to bring emotions and drive the actions.
So I had to experiment and try several combinations before starting to take film references of myself.
Another thing I didn’t consider was the fact that after every line of dialogue I needed some kind of reaction from the opposing character, so I had to go back to the audio to make it sure to have it.

This is part of the reference footage I took to understand better the gestures and the acting of the characters.
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Here are some sketches (the “clearest” ones) that I did to  solve the different situations I encountered during the process.

Knight Sketches

Dragon Versus Knight

Dragon Jump

Dragon Angry

Dragon Falling

Ending

Opening title

It cannot be perfect at the first try, right?
I stumbled upon some problems with the Dragon rig that needed to be fixed.
Luckily (almost) everything was ok after a bit of work.

Uhm... there is something wrong with my mouth

When the script was amended and approved I literally had to rush to the recording studio:
since the dialogue was such a central part on my animation I had to make sure to get it right before starting
to animate, because the timing of my animation was relying on dialogue and reactions of the characters.

Simon Nader and Tamnsin Urquhart did a great job.
And in the studio I was able to film them while acting, in order to use that footage as a reference for the expressions.

Here is Simon doing the dragon:
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Here is Tamsing doing the princess Screams (loud audio!)
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And here is Simon doing the Knight
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After presenting the animatic to the National Gallery staff, I had to rethink a bit the story:
It wasn’t flowing well and it had some problems here and there. Mainly I didn’t choose where the climax was, so my dialogue was quite weak. And the Dragon’s character was quite ambiguous. It wasn’t clear that he was the hero of my story.

I refined a bit the whole script, cutting some dialogues and reshaping a bit the duel between him and the knight.

Here is a scan of the script being reworked:

the script of the story

And with the amends to the story finally came also the title of the short: Broccoli Soup!

The final Script

===== Broccoli Soup =====

– - – - – - Script – - – - – - -
Nice scene pan with hills and a tree and a nice cave/house where the camera is going to zoom in.
A nice kitchen where a pot is boiling, then you see a spoon stirring and then the dragon sniffing the soup

Dragon: Sniff sniff, Ahhh the best broccoli soup ever made!

When he’s almost tasting the soup he/we hear a powerful girlish scream from outside
to see where this screams are coming from he goes to the window and he sees a knight jabbing a princess with his lance.

Princess: AAAAAAAAAARRRGGGHHH!!

Dragon: Hey you!
Leave her alone!

Princess: Pardon me sir, but I don’t need any help, and besides I don’t even know who you are!

Knight: Ah, but you know this!

The Knight beats her on the head with his lance

Princess: Aargh!
Ouch!

Dragon: Hey! I said leave her alone!

Knight: Oh, so you want a piece of this as well?
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (looong evil laugh)
while he’s laughing:

Dragon: Grrrrrr

The knight in his evilness, so proud and sure of himself, laughing, loses the rope the princess is tied to and the dragon sees it.

Dragon: OH!

The dragon then jumps to take the rope while the knight is still busy with his laugh
and the knight after a bit realises what happened.

Knight: BWHAHAHAHAHAHA….EEEH?
Give me back my bootie!

Dragon: I don’t think so!

Knight: Grrrrrr!!! I said give me back my chick!

Dragon: No! You don’t deserve such a rare flower!

Knight: Grrrrr you…you….HORRIBLE MONSTER!!!

Dragon: I may be a monster, but I at least know about chivalry!

Knight: Enough talk!
Now you will dieeeeeee!

Sad piano music, polaroid pictures of the dragon’s life, titles.
the last polaroid the is being picked up by a jeweled hand

Princess: Is this your wife?

Dragon: Yes, we were in Paris for our honeymoon!

Princess: So cuuuute!…. Hmmmm what’s that delicious aroma? Is…is that broccoli soup??

Dragon: Yes Madam… the best broccoli soup ever made!

Princess: But are you sure the door is sturdy enough to stop him?

Dragon: Of course muhlady, this house is knightproof!

In this last shot, you see the knight through the window trying to take his lace from the floor where it’s stucked

Knight: Gnnnnn (the sound he does in the strain of taking out the lance)

After finalizing the models was time to prepare the Blend Shapes for all of them.
Being the story spoken for the most part I had to prepare several of them.
I already prepared the horse’s blend shapes when I did the model. It was my first attempt on that and I did them all together not caring to separate lips, eyes and eyebrowses.

Later during the course I learn how properly do them and followed the methods outlined on Jason Osipa’s “Stop staring”  book and then I followed the animatic to prepare the expressions I needed for the dragon, the princess and the knight.

Here are some samples of the Dragon and the Horse facial expressions.

Blend Shapes

As a final piece i did the environment where the story is set.
My aim is to have the hills looking like in this Paolo Uccello Painting:

For the Dragon’s cave I found some interesting pictures around the web:

And here are the models of the environment and the cave:

The Environment

And finally here is the model of George, the rude Knight. I wanted to do make it look as simple as his persona.
I took references from various classical armors.
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And here it is the final model, sitting on Brutus

These 2 models aren’t rigged yet, but I wanted to make sure that the proportions were right.

And here it is the princess’ 3d model.

The modeling phase of the of the other 3 charachters happened pretty much at the same time.
I was jumping from one to the other to avoid going crazy.

For the Dragon’s model I didn’t used any reference.

As I mentioned earlier, the horse was the first thing to be concepted and modeled.
It was my first attempt to build a complex poligonal model.

References

I took references from pictures all over the web.
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Modeling

And here it is the model of Brutus taking shape
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My original idea was to make the dragon a martyr. But everyone was very disappointed with this ending. So with a little trick I faked the Dragon’s death, in order to have it alive and happy for the ending of the story.

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I don’t think that Dragons are evil creatures. Quite the oppsite actually: the dragons are wise and gentle creatures, or most likely they just live their own life.

This thing always bothered me.

But this time I had the chance to let the truth shine, to explain thatDragons are abused and killed by evil knignts!

So my initial idea was to show a well mannered dragon happily minding his business in his own den: doing his a vegetarian broccoli soup (because he’s so gentle that he would never kill anyone, not even to feed himself). All of a sudden the quiet is broken by a rude knight dragging around a poor and helpless princess. The dragon, being a gentleman, try to save her form her miserable destiny, just to be cowardly killed by the evil Knight.

Originally i thought that was nice to use this story as a metaphor to represent domestic violence: that often violence is most likely to come from the people you know more than from strangers.

Initial Storyboard

Early Storyboard

Once the painting was settled I started to think about the characters.
The painting features 4 of them and I wanted to use them all, after all, the St. George tale needs them all.

The horse

I started concepting the characters earlier during the course, I sketched them out really roughly and I didn’t know that I would have no more time to draw them properly.
I realized that I could use the horse for the second term of the course so during the Christmas break I modeled it with Maya

Horse - sketches

The Dragon

The concepts of the dragon came shortly afterwards, during the second term

Dragon

The Knight and the Princess

During the spring break I managed to concept both the princess and the knight

Knight

Princess

The environment

And finally I developed the environment where to set the whole animation. It consisted basically in the dragon’s den and the surrounding garden with some tree

Paolo Uccello - St George And the dragon - National Gallery

To be honest, when I started this course i knew about the final project and the fact that it was made in collaboration with the National Gallery.

My favorite painting (until now)  is “St. George and the Dragon” by Paolo Uccello which, coincidentally, is part of the National Gallery collection. So the choice was already there before starting.