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Nita and Spot

Year: 2010

Personal Project

Nita and Spot were my dog s from my childhood, and my inspiration to create this artwork. This was my university graduation project and the first short movie I did all by myself. It was a fun process to learn all aspects of 3D, both artistic and technical. It was all executed in Blender.

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The Snowman

This was the third version of the short movie, which I did with new concepts and a  study about animal anatomy, especially its bones and muscles. Rigging a quadruped was a challenge that took weeks to reach an acceptable result. Body shapes for the dogs were redesigned to emphasize their differences and give cartoon proportions. The hair system remained the same, but now with dynamic movement. To test this system, a short animation called The Snowman was done. Although I felt pretty happy with the result, I felt that the fur render needed more attention, which makes me decide to upgrade it to cycles in the next version.

The Box 3D Intro

As a recreation of the 2D Animation, these part of the project started in the beginning of 2012 and everything was rebuild, including the main story, which now contains a new scenario and extra animations. The dog model was upgraded and received a new hair particle system, with 7 layers of fur for Spot. Everything was developed at Blender, using its internal Render, and each frame took about 40 min to render. The intro movie took almost a month to be rendered in full HD.

After some sequences, the rigging system and the model loops proved to be not good enough for complex movements required for the movie, so I decided to stop it and rebuild everything.

The Box 2D

The Box was made in 2012 during my animation course at the University of Sydney. It's also my first animation in 2D, starring Nita and Spot, which are also my first characters. It was made using Adobe Flash and took about 3 months from storyboarding until the final animation, with more than 1000  hand drawing frames. The scenario was made using 3D trees with Blender software and post-production with After Effects.

 

The original story had twice the time of the final animation, but I decided to make a short version and focus on the 3D animation instead. Spot is a proud and selfish Siberian husky, who doesn't want any other dog in his area. Nita is an innocent rottweiler, with a lovely hearth and an uncontrollable hungry. They had everything to hate each other, but in the end, they became friends and that's how their saga begins.

Some animations sequences were very complex and needed to be planned separately from the main workflow. They are unique and give personality to the characters, making the story entertaining and dinamic.

Initial Version

The first 3D project about the puppies started in 2012 with very simple models and a posing rigging. It was a fur study that envolved into a full short movie. Inspired in my two real dogs, Nita is a Rottweiller and Spot a Husky. Their behaviour and personality are reflected in the digital ones, although they never lived thogheter. Nita was part of my childhood while I just had Spot when I was older. 

Both were my favourite characters that I used to draw. Nita has a comic book about its adventures looking for food while Spot is a companion dog in another story. 

The idea of creating a short movie about them came after these first images were done. 

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