On A Wing

An energetic young dragon has but one goal: to obtain his stoic older brother’s praise by mastering basic skills. But the surprise lies in what he learns about himself.

My goal for this film was to create a 3 minute short film aimed towards young children, that utilizes 3D animation with a strong focus on combining character animation and creature animation. Over the course of this film, I wanted to  improve my acting abilities as well as my animation skills.

I wanted to write a story that explored the concept of perfectionism. Today, people are conditioned into believing that they must be perfect at everything to not be viewed as a failure. These self-critical traits can be toxic and damaging to one’s mental and physical health, especially when expectations aren’t met. No one person is good at everything and failure isn’t always a bad thing. Instead, people should be allowed to recognize their self-worth and accept that as long as they did their best, they don’t have to be perfect. 

Younger Brother

I wanted the Little Brother to feel small and scrawny, the total opposite of his older brother. He has bigger eyes and a rounded face, to make him feel like a younger dragon. One of his horns is also smaller than the other to emphasize the idea that he isn’t perfect. Though he’s small, he has a big personality and I wanted to show that through his expressions and acting. 

Older Brother

I wanted the Big Brother to feel like a perfect, idealized dragon, someone that his younger brother looks up to. I gave him a thicker body type and arms to make him look larger, stronger, and more powerful. I also gave him a rectangular face to offset his brother’s rounded design. He’s a lot calmer than his younger brother, so I wanted his expressions to be more subtle. 

Character Pose Exploration

Environment

The environment in my film was done in Unreal Engine 4, which allows me to render in minutes rather than hours or days. I’ve never worked with Unreal before this project, so it was a unique process of trial and error.

Compositing Process

First, I created my environment in Unreal. I made all of my cameras in this file and once finalized, I would render the shot. I also exported the cameras to Maya so I would be able to animate

Next I would import the Unreal camera into Maya and animate the character. I would place any necessary props, like grass, into the scene, then light and render it out. 

I then combined the backgrounds and characters in After Effects. I would add shadows as well as make color corrections in order to make the characters feel like they fit within the environment.