Kappa - short movie Ricochet

Short movie Ricochet - Character design main character

For our 3rd year at ESMA school we had, by teams of 4 or 5, to imagine a short movie of 30 seconds in a limited amount of time. The theme was "there is something fishy". I had then this idea with two worlds, the human one where a little boy would come to the pond to play after school, and the spirit one where a bored kappa was gatekeeping the pond, door between the two worlds. The Kappa would endlessly help the souls of the deceased terrestrial creatures to cross the gate and find peace in the spirit world. But the task was starting to feel a bit repetitive after a few millennia...

Those 6 frames were the first time the idea was correctly articulated and submitted to my group and we all decided to go with it and create a universe around this idea.

We titled the movie "Ricochet" because of the boy playing by the pond and because it was what pushed the Kappa to interact in the first place.

Then I worked on the storyboard and animatic parts. The goal was to understand in a very limited amount of time the two characters. First the boy who has no idea of the spirits' world and therefore is scared when he sees an unknown creature, even if it has the kindest intentions. And then the Kappa who is bored but easily curious and longing to interact. He gets easily hurt by the rejection, like a child, as his gesture is so pure and sincere. But he can be as easily comforted by the arrival of an unexpected new friend ! 

In the end, a bad situation can turn into a good one !

We then started the concept art part and with my teammate Mariachiaria Palumbo we started chara designing the characters, both of them at first, so she helped me through the first steps of the Kappa, then we focused each on a character, her on the young teenager, Ryuji, and I on the Kappa.

The idea was to play with the waterlily so at first we thought about it as a hat. But then, and as you noticed in the storyboard, the idea came of using the plant as a camouflage, and integrating it into the character instead of just as an accessorize. That's when the idea of a cape came. It was able to deploy on the surface of the water, and with the kappa's head crowned by the flower it would look like a normal (just abnormally big) waterlily from above ! It would increase this idea of a mythical creature, used to hide from humans, very shy. And help to create the contrast with this Kappa in particular who wishes to connect with others because of how bored he is.

Here is the turn of the character, full body and head turn.

Then I explored the emotions and poses. I tried to contain the emotions at the eyes and mouth since we didn't have a main rigger, to facilitate the facial rig as much as possible.

I explored the cape design in terms of shape and pattern as well as the character's color. 

For the final design it was decided to go for something natural and organic linked to the waterlily's colors.

It was now time to translate this 2D idea into 3D. So I did the sculpt of the character in Blender and the retopology in Maya.

For the render the goal was to achieve a 2D feeling so we worked mostly with the Albedo and the main work was done in compositing. We used a rather simple process in the continuity of the time limit we had for this project.

We arrive at the end of the story of our little Kappa, thank you for sticking with me until the end ! I hope you liked him ! Of course there is a whole universe around him that was created with 3 other talented students ! 

I thank the team Mariachiara Palumbo, Manon Aguettaz and Iris Rozsnyo Kerasioti for the world we created together ! And the teachers and ESMA Administration for their support through it all !