Chasing Nutcracker

About Chasing Nutcracker

Our Concept

Chasing Nutcracker is heavily inspired by numerous Christmas Movies, one of the many 3D Animated films that we take inspiration from are 'Klaus' by Sergio Pablos and 'Rise of The Guardians' by Paramount Pictures. For our art direction we take inspiration from the hit multiplayer game 'It Takes Two' by Hazelight Studios and 'Unbreakable' by Roof Studio.

Storyboards

Animatics

Our Characters:
Nutcracker

A run of the mill Nutcracker whom accidentally gains sentience, his goal is to escape the factory he was made in and become a gift worthy of love.

Nutcracker Design

The likeness for the nutcracker was inspired by tin soldier toys rather than actual nutcrackers to make the design look more appealing for a protagonist, we also want to implement how we can turn the Nutcracker into a playable toy, so we took inspiration on the wooden toy protagonists in The Book of Life and Woody from Toy Story on his mobility.

Nutcracker's early exploration stages:

Nutcracker's 3D modeling stage:

Nutcracker Final Outcome

Toy Factory Version

Trash Bin Version

Nutcracker Rig

S4NT4

The robotic overseer of the factory and the primary antagonist of the Nutcracker, his main objective is to prevent all defective toys from ever becoming gifts.

S4NTA Design

S4NTA’s specification needs to have high mobility as he is the one leading and filling the role as quality control for all the gifts before being sent out to children on Christmas. He is heavily inspired by a character from Robots.

S4NT4's sarly exploration stages:

S4NT4's 3D modeling stage:

S4NT4 Final Outcome

S4NT4 Rig

The Boy

A young boy living in poverty who stumbles upon the broken Nutcracker. Roaming the streets during Christmas, his only wish is to experience the warmth of the holiday season.

The Boy Design

Since the era is set on late 1800’s we wanted to give the boy a more Victorian look, since he’s a beggar we added in a more rugged look.

The Boy's 3D modeling stage:

As for the Boy's model and rig, we followed the existing proportion and features from an existing design from a free to use rig.

The Boy Rig

Animation Style

Our main inspirations are 'Toy Story' by Pixar and 'Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse' by Sony. As a result, the animation style we are going for is a mix between photorealistic and cartoonish. There are parts with snappier timing, but otherwise we don’t stray too far from our reference videos. In hindsight there is room for more experimentation (timing and animation-wise), but at that time we were novices to the genre and subject matter, therefore we decided to prioritize aiming for accuracy.

Because we already have a good example on how an “animated toy that comes to life” would act, we decided to observe how Woody, the main character from Toy Story, moves, and brought bits and pieces of that into our own animation. Spiderverse was also a good reference for the tentacle sequence and we always referred to that whenever we needed to.

Animation Tests:

Early animation tests done with free to use rigs, Woody rig (for Nutcracker) and Doc Ock rig (for tentacle) [Software used: Autodesk Maya].

Late pre-production test with the early version of Nutcracker rig

Late pre-production test with the early version of Santa rig

Environment:

S4NT4’s Toy Factory

The overall theme is Christmas and our idea sparks off from the question, does Santa exist? why is he up high in the sky? maybe he has a factory in the sky somewhere that produces special presents? That's how we get to envision that the factory is set in the sky. we decided on the late 1800 because we want to enhance more on the authentic side of Christmas, with a little twist of steampunk themed factory to go along with.

Toy Factory Design

The style and art direction for our factory is heavily inspired by an original animation short on YouTube called Unbreakable, heading towards a more realistic texturing with stylized features. Since its a toy factory it needs a production line, we added in building variations that symbolizes the production stages it is also to indicate where our protagonist is currently at throughout the film. One of the challenges we faced was to build a new environment and style, a factory that would fit everything in nicely without having too much heavy machines in and still feels jolly, one of the reasons why we conclude to have the factory in a compact snow globe.

Early stages of the Toy Factory

At this stage, this is finally where we get to see the factory clearly.

Toy Factory modeling stage:

Texture breakdown and tests:

Texture finalization

This is where we finally get to see a clearer render of the textures!

Toy Factory in its full glory!

After going through multiple revisions, we finally get to properly divide the toy making section! This is the whole Toy Factory breakdown with better spacing and arrangements.

S4NT4's Toy Factory Final Outcome

The Alley

The final location of our story that takes place in a narrow alleyway during a busy Christmas Night where the Nutcracker finds love from a boy whom he shares a similar trait with.

Early stages of the Alley

Alley 3D modeling stage

The Alley Final Outcome

Visual Effects

For the VFX we applied post-production, we wanted to utilize our time by using After Effects.

Since we have so much going on in the factory and the amount of lighting and its changes, we decided to avoid the use of 3D engine simulation.

Since the factory is magical, we wanted to show the elements in the factory by adding a magic circle VFX, our magic circle VFX is inspired by a popular animated series, Arcane. transition wise we took inspiration from 'Doctor Strange’s' magic circle. As for the snow, we took reference from real life movie shots.

Lighting and Mood

for our lighting we have two different lightings in our Toy factory, Jolly Mood and Danger Mood. Jolly Mood happens when S4NT4 is happy with his perfect products while danger mood happens when S4NT4 is about to dispose of the defect toys.

Color Scripts

Color Keys and Lighting Renders

That's all from us! We hoped you had a magical ride going through our production stages!

Special Thanks,

to our lecturers in The One Academy for guiding us through the entire process, our creative team, friends and family for wholeheartedly supporting us and to our talented music and SFX composers who crafted such an amazing orchestra for us.