My Love

                              My Love

Synopsis

A widow unable to move on from her husband’s death pretends he is still alive. Eventually, she can no longer lie to herself and is forced to face reality.

Background

The experience of losing someone you loved so dearly is something that everyone will have to go through. We hope to create a story that will serve as a reminder for people to appreciate every moment they share with their loved ones.

The story’s theme was inspired by Tim Burton’s stop-motion film, Frankenweenie (2012), while our story structure was inspired by Pixar’s animated movie, Up (2009).

Storyboards

Animatic

Concept

After going through many possible concepts and themes for the designs and the location of the film, we decided that our story will take place around the 1900s in Czechoslovakia. We also wanted our characters to feel like they’re a part of this beautiful culture so we were also inspired by traditional Czechoslovakia dancers and their outfits from that era.

We were inspired by the culture, art, and architecture of 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the single-roomed Zalipie villages in Poland

Art Direction

We selected a few film references to follow, mainly the strong shape language of Bao, and the lighting, scene progression, and foliage of Up

Concept Art

Some early concept art of the key moments in the story to help visualize the lighting, mood, and shape language of the film

Character -  Grandma

An introverted and shy widow who is unable to move on from her husband’s death and is living in her fantasy world, pretending that her husband is still alive. Her design was inspired by traditional Czechoslovakian Babushkas, featuring iconic features like a round, squashed silhouette, and the all-important headscarf.

Grandma Design

Research and references, design sketches and thumbnails, and final design.

Grandma Modeling

Once the design was locked down, our modelers began to research and work on the 3D models based on the 2D designs provided by our art team.

Early blocking - Here our modelers were testing the waters and deciding on how they should approach the models while taking notes on the lecturers’ feedback and advice to optimize our workflow and achieve a more satisfactory look.

Final Sculpting - Final look for the grandma’s 3D model after many refinements.

Look Dev

Final Model 

Grandma Rig

Grandma Animation Tests

Character - Grandpa

A loving husband who cares deeply for his wife, despite his poor health. He died from an illness and his death severely impacted the Grandma, thus causing her to be unable to move on and instead live with his skeleton. 

Grandpa Design

Research and references, design sketches and thumbnails, and final design.

Grandpa Modeling

Early Blocking

Final Sculpting

Look Dev

Final Model

Grandpa Poses & Expression

Grandpa Rig

Character - Grandpa Skeleton

The remains of the Grandpa after his death. His skeleton has been meticulously taken care of by the Grandma.

Grandpa Skeleton Design

Research and references, design sketches and thumbnails, and final design.

Grandpa Skeleton Modeling

Research and references, model stages (blocking, refine, topology), look dev (texture/material test) final model.

Early Blocking

Final Sculpting

Look Dev

Final Model

Environment 

Exterior and Interior Environment

Our film’s exterior environment consists of a massive, grassy plain complemented by flower bushes scattered throughout, a solitary tree standing next to the house, a well, a path, and a hilly backdrop. Our Cottage’s interior environment features compact but cozy furnishing, designed to tell more about the character’s personalities

Cottage Design 

Our Cottage exterior was mainly inspired by Zalipie houses from Poland. We liked their expressive floral designs and striking color scheme

Our Cottage’s interior design was heavily inspired by both traditional Czechoslovakian cottage interiors and Zalipie house interiors. We mainly took the idea of the one room cottage, and the presence of the Kachelofen, the Stone oven. 

Below are Concept arts we made for the Cottage interior and exterior

Interior Environment Modelling 

The final look for our Cottage’s interior 

Props Model

Exterior Environment Design

In most of our exterior shots, a tree, grass and bushes were present, so they were the 3 things we needed to take care of the most. Modelling, texturing and set dressing foliage was the biggest challenge for our Look Development team, with the singular biggest hurdle being the tree.

We mainly followed the shape language and foliage design of Luca

Exterior Environment Modelling

We had the most issues when modelling the tree and grass, and went through many different iterations of it

Matte Painting 

In our film, as our exterior environment was supposed to be a vast, hilly landscape, the matte painting had to be very detailed and high quality. We had to go through several iterations and repaints to achieve the result we wanted.

Challenges

The challenges that are worth mentioning here are the rendering setup and render technical issues. For example, the XGEN and the auto smoothen issue. Our group has constantly encountered this issue where the XGEN is broken as shown in the pictures below.

Animation

We decided on a slightly realistic approach to our film’s animation, with heavy inspiration and reference from UP. The characters are animated with slight exaggeration from time to time due to the stylized design of the characters. However most of the time they are animated in a more realistic way with attention to subtle movements to express the emotions of the characters.

Animation Test

Here we’ve compiled our animation tests done by our animators where they experimented on the acting choices for the characters in the animation to see which options were better suited for our film direction.

Colour Scripts

Colour Keys & Lighting Renders

Key moments color keys.

Special thanks to our family, friends, and lecturers who supported us throughout this journey. We hope you enjoyed our film, thank you!