Dog Days

"Dog Days" has not been publicly released, so it is privately listed for the judges. But you can watch the trailer! Hope you enjoy it!

When deciding on the look of the film, I knew I wanted something stylized in its models and textures; I was very much leaning towards a painterly look and away from realism. All textures and materials including any specular and metallic reflections were hand painted in the diffuse map. I drew inspiration specifically from Disney's animated shorts "Feast" and "Paperman", Sony's Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, as well as "The Witness" and "Suits" from Netflix's anthology series Love Death + Robots.

Arvie's design was based off a sweet lemon beagle named Sandy who belonged to a family friend. It has been a few years since she passed. I also wanted Arvie to be a beagle because that breed was the most fitting to his personality. He loves the attention of his human and is quite rambunctious and curious. The breed's high intelligence and ability to focus is expressed in his determination to get his human to interact with him. He doesn't stop his antics until he gets what he wants. In regards to Arvie's animation, I pulled inspiration from circus dog performances. I worked closely with my animators until we were able to capture the purposeful showmanship in Arvie's movements. Much of the research behind this film went into watching cute dog videos online, I can't even complain.

Rosa is Arvie's owner. She is a young woman in her twenties living alone in her studio apartment. I chose not to fully reveal her face in the film because the story is told primarily through Arvie's perspective. It is in a dog's nature to read body language and I wanted to see how well we could sell her emotions on that alone. 

The biggest goal when designing the environment was having the apartment appear lived in, like an organized mess. I wanted it to look cozy, but not claustrophobic, messy, but not chaotic (at first). This is Arvie's home as much as it is Rosa's so his toys, bed, kibble, and bowl are strewn around the area. I loved the look of mid-century furniture for it's quirky and interesting silhouettes. I mixed that style of furniture with more old fashioned as well as contemporary designs to make it appear that this apartment belonged to a young person who didn't have the money to splurge on matching furniture sets, but still had a distinct taste.

I roughly blocked the environment in Maya before bringing it into Photoshop to finish the line work and coloring.

Hero Props and Material References

Lighting plays an enormous role in  storytelling. I wanted the lighting throughout the film to be warm and inviting, but increase in its warmth as the story progressed. I also wanted to have an overall nostalgic feel to the environment hence the use of volumetric atmosphere as well as adding glow in post. I kept the light outside the windows for most shots overexposed with only a hint of an outside world to push the idea that Rosa is Arvie's entire world. Nothing else matters to him. The goal was to make the film look like a dream or a hazy memory.

From Storyboard to Final Render