While we made Silly Me second, we wrote it to be the prequel to "I Am Chemistry." Why not, you know? All the characters and a fair amount of the set pieces are all handmade by moi, 3D-scanned in, and animated with mocap. It was a challenge.
Started this one out, as always, with concept drawings. Knew we wanted a "Wind in the Willows" vibe, but pushed a little stranger, a little more fantasy. Didn't get to pull off all of it - maybe I'll draw from some of these down the line. Probably.
First made the armatures, than went to work on the beasts. Used this stuff called "Magi-Sculpt", which is awesome: it's a two part clay. Works like really high-end Bondo, I guess. Made these in my garage with the door open. Weather had just turned nice, had just moved in the house. Neighbors kept stopping by, saw all these animals with genitals, thought I was nuts. Well don't blame me, I just work here.
Spraypainted the base with Acrylic, painted all the rest by brush. Really wanted the marks to show: it's difficult to mimic that in CGI. I mean, you can definitely fake it, but it's just a different feel when you're painting on real clay.
Couple stills from the video. Above: the background (the animal's den) is all CGI. Don't tell anyone. Below: happy with how the paint came out. If I did it all in something like Substance Painter, you know, I just wouldn't have made it so free and messy. Which I like, here.
Here's Ry-Guy (Ryan) suiting up Akela in the mocap suit. She choreographed and danced every character. Checkout that coincidental image over Ry's shoulder. Ha! (They're both really attractive people, it's just a terrible photo, sorry y'all.)
Ryan scan's one of the models while Abby DIT's.
Initial look dev for the constellations.
We originally planned to zoom into a book at the beginning of the video, like an old Disney movie or such. Marco Cousins did an incredible job fabricating the book. Unfortunately, the shoot didn't work out and it synced poorly with the video, so we scrapped it. So it goes.
