Channel Frederator Blog

For my contributions to “How To Thursdays”, I’ll be doing a short film. Why a whole short film? Well, it’s the best way to show every step of the process I go through when doing a 3D (computer) animated piece.

I’ve been wanting to do a short that uses a lot of color for some time now, and I’ve done a few posts here in the past about color, so this short’s working title is “The Color Film”.

What Mars looks like in grayscale

The first step is coming up with an idea. That’s easier said than done. There are so many possibilities. For my short, I wanted to not only show the rigging and animation process, but also some more advanced techniques, like fur and fluid simulation. My short will have to feature those to some degree.

I came up with the following rough story idea:

On a desolate planet, there are these furry creatures that are solid colors.

When one creature sees another creature of a different color…

it chews up and swallows that creature, which changes it original color.

This new creature then spits out two small, wet furballs, which are the two colors that created it.

These small furballs then pop into full grown versions of themselves.

This then increases the population.

This will continue until all the primary and secondary colors have been displayed. Then the planet will absorb all the characters, turning it black. There will be an earthquake which will set off geysers of color. This color will soak into the planet’s surface. The piece ends with another color creature appearing.

So that’s the rough idea. That’s how all films start - with an idea. Tune in next Thursday when I show off the next step in my process: the storyboards.
-Floyd Bishop