“Busy” is a 3D Senior Film about a girl who wants to do her homework but her sister keeps interrupting her.
Director Statement
"Don't be busy. Be productive"
I think it was in a TED talk video that I heard a statement along those lines. Those words and the meaning behind them, really stood out to me at that time. I was constantly working long hours without getting much done and I was always "too busy" to spend time with friends or family. This film serves as a reminder for me and for the audience to take it easy, take breaks often, and enjoy life more.
...Also, yes, the story is loosely based on my sister and I... she can get really weird when she is bored.
Concept
The idea for my story is loosely based on real life. I have always been really close to my sister. She is very funny and I always found the way she acts very endearing. When she is bored she often sends me voice memos of herself talking which made me think that it would be great to have a rig that looked like her so that I could animate her. When it came to the time to decide what story to tell with my Senior Film, I used this opportunity to create a character very similar to my sister.
The story is also inspired in real life, not only because of the Younger Sister character but also, it serves as a visual letter reminding myself to "take it easy," take breaks and enjoy life more.
Inspiration
I was very inspired by the visual style of the short films: Feast, Paperman and The Dam Keeper. Both Feast and Paperman are 3D films but they achieve a 2D aesthetic. All three films keep that illustrative style and make the film feel like each image is a moving illustration. Another element that all three films have in common is the amazing lighting and colors. For my film, I also tried to achieve that illustration-like style with very warm colors to match the warm tone of my story. And to show different lighting, I wanted time to progress from the beginning (noon/afternoon) to the end (dusk).
Production
To achieve the 2D flat rendered look of the film, we used three render layers: an Arnold color pass, a rim highlight pass and a shadow pass made with ramp shaders. To achieve the flat color pass through Arnold, we realized that the key was to have one light and one dome light with no shadows.In addition to those three passes, we rendered a Depth of Field Pass and a Fog pass.
To speed up the process, we rendered the characters separate from the background. Since my cameras were static and sometimes the same camera was reused for multiple shots we only had to render one frame of each shot with the different progressive lighting.
On the left we see the first test render we did. We got feedback from professors and peers and the result is the second test render. Although we made changes, there was still something missing. It is then when we realized that since my cameras are static, I could draw over one frame in Photoshop and add details such as the post-it notes to make the scene feel more alive.
Compositing was done in Nuke. Above is the basic node graph for all shots.