DON'T FEED THE UNICORN
An animated short film by Kimberly Peh and Kris Hogan, created at Ringling College of Art and Design.
final film:
Both responsible for all aspects.
Lead of: Unicorn model/rig/groom, Character textures, Environment/color design, Set modeling, Matte painting, Lighting, Compositing, 2D FX, Graphic design.
Breakdown of our process below!
pre-production:
Kris and I developed the concept and animatic for DFTU over 10 weeks in Spring 2023, each doing half of the storyboards, editing, and visual development.
Full Animatic (boards by me labeled & marked in yellow) :
Here are 2 of the sequences I did in click-through and thumbnail form:
I did the character designs for Unicorn, and some character exploration for Junior, whose final design is by Kris. We both designed the props and environments seen in the film. Here is a compilation of some of the process and exploration that I was responsible for.
Our final logline is:
While foraging in a magical forest, a young troll feeds a persistent wild unicorn behind his dad’s back. But once he runs out of food, Junior quickly learns through a dark twist why you don’t feed the unicorn!
characters:
I was responsible for Unicorn's final painting and character expressions.
In Fall 2023, we began creating the characters in 3D. We first did orthographics for all the characters. I did Unicorn's while Kris did Junior and Senior's. Here is Unicorn's final orthographic and some drawovers I did for Junior and Senior's work-in-progress.
I modeled, textured, and rigged Unicorn using ZBrush, Maya, and Substance Painter.
I also did her pink mane, tail, and hoof groom using XGen.
Unicorn is rigged to make a wide variety of facial expressions as she switches from cute to evil.
For Junior and Senior, I was responsible for character textures in Substance Painter only (not including hair shaders).
sets/props:
I led the environment design of the film. Above are some of the visual development paintings and set models I did (responsible for all aspects), alongside the final renders.
In total, we created 7 unique sets to make up the entire forest.
I modeled and textured the normal trees and bushes that were instanced throughout the sets. These are the hi-res versions of the models; I also made lo-res versions to place further from the camera.
Other assets I textured are the DFTU sign (model by Kris) and small flowers.
I was responsible for the bridge model and rigs.
The regular bridge is rigged to let us animate it bouncing when the characters move across it.
The falling bridge is a separate rig, used in one of the last shots of the film.
These are some of the other props I modeled and rigged only:
animation:
We animated the film over Fall 2023 and Spring 2024.
Here is a compilation of the shots I animated, in chronological order:
post-production:
In Spring 2024, I did the film's lighting, compositing, and matte painting, while Kris did rendering and de-noising.
The film was lit in Maya and composited in Nuke, with matte paintings done in Photoshop.
Here are the breakdowns for a few of the shots in the film:
I referenced color keys I had painted earlier in the visdev process.
These are some of the matte paintings I did for the film. I placed the trees, clouds, bushes, and grass paintings on planes, instancing and reusing them across different shots. Other paintings were done for specific shots, such as the cliffs behind the bridge, and the canyon. I wanted the environments to look like a balance between 3D rendering and the stylized look of our visdev.
Before/after gallery showing lighting in Maya only, and after compositing in Nuke:
I led the 2D FX of the film, which were hand-painted in Photoshop on top of the composited frames. The sparkles made up the majority of FX, and were animated in a combination of 1s and 2s.
I did the Unicorn disappearing effect in Nuke, with her being on a separate render layer.
After compositing, all shots, sound design, and music were edited together in Premiere Pro by Kris :)
extra stuff!
I designed the title and end credits of our film.
The official poster we made, plus a silly unicorn one I illustrated :)
thanks for looking!