PINOCCHIO
After returning home from the funeral of both his son and wife, disgraced puppeteer Gepetto begins his process of mourning and grief as he starts to spiral into a deep well of madness and paranoia, believing that one of his old toys, Pinocchio, has come to life.
During my Motion Title Sequence class at VFS, we had the opportunity to create a title sequence of any creative commons we wanted. I decided to choose Pinocchio, but I wanted to give it its own twist. It would be enjoyable to have this version of Pinocchio be a psychological thriller, taking inspiration from movies like Halloween, Possum, and the Babadook.
2D Animation
3D Animation
Modeling
Lighting
Animation
Storyboard
ROLES
SOFTWARE
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Cinema 4D
RedShift
DELIVERABLES
10 - 40 Second Animation H.264 MP4
CONCEPTING
I started drawing different versions of the Pinocchio Doll, trying to keep the essence of the original doll or the original look of the puppet. While thinking about the Design of the doll, I had to take into consideration how complex the model and the movements of the animation were going to be since I was planning on doing an FK Rig. So, each doll joint had to be functional and connected with each limb.
DESIGN
I designed the rest of the 3D model in Cinema 4D. The basic structure of the doll was made up of simple geometry, and I began box modeling and building on that base structure. I used simple extrudes to give the geometry details, and I started building the rest of the parts of the doll using shapes like cubes and spheres and joining them together using volume meshes. I then created a different set of materials for the doll using Redshift. I began using the Bump and Material blender to create more dynamic shaders.
ANIMATION
Due to time constraints, I had to develop an efficient shot and animation for the title sequence. I did want to add a very subtle movement hinting to the audience that the doll was really alive. I achieved that with a simple FK rig and added very slight animations to the PSR properties in Cinema 4D. I then did the title animations in After Effects using displacement maps and wiggle expressions.
CHALLENGES
The most challenging part of this project was that I chose to do it in 3D. Creating a complete 3D sequence in such a short time frame was very intimidating. However, I found several ways to solve this problem to stay within the project's scope. By keeping the sequence as one simple long shot, very similar to the title sequence of the movie Halloween, I could also add themes and concepts to the story while reaching the project's deadline.
RESULTS
In conclusion, I enjoyed working on this project because I learned new texturing techniques in RedShift. I got a lot more familiar with the node editor, and I was able to combine materials using the material blender.
CREDITS
Animation: Rodrigo Villegas
Design: Rodrigo Villegas
Special Thanks to my Instructor Nour, Jonathan Brioshchi.