A small pilot for a big idea
So, I haven't posted any animations in a while. This Summer I had the opportunity to churn out a lot of short content that's kind of amusing. My Joker version of the Livesey walk did very well on YouTube and it was just a walk loop that took me less than two days to finish. But now I want to make something bigger, more difficult and definitely more personal.
Calavera's Research Unit of Horrors
The original idea
I had a half-baked idea for a series surrounding a character named Scio Calavera, who is essentially an amalgamation of all the evil scientist tropes we know of to give it a new spin and try to subvert it as much as possible in a funny way and in a fantasy medieval setting. He would have his faithful sidekick Homunculus who'd be a comedic addition to his character. But since Homunculus does not speak or even make face gestures, it was getting hard to write interesting dialogue in a consistent way. I would've had to rely too much on Calavera monologues and that was gonna get tiring really fast. They are still a charming duo, though, so I am not scratching them out, so instead of getting rid of them I decided to add more flavors to the mix.
A team of misfits and weirdos
If there's anything many of my favorite shows have that I like is a full cast of comedically incompatible people forced to work together to achieve a goal, or many goals (TMNT, Justice League, Community, Futurama). It's cliché, but dude, clichés work as long as you offer something else to make it spicy. In this case that spicy thing is the Halloween/Fantasy theme. That's why we have a Soldier, a Witch and a Gigantic Jack-O-Lantern to complete the team alongside the Frankenstein-inspired Scientist and the little packet of concentrated evil that is Homunculus.
Freja
The first new character that I thought of adding to the team was Freja in order to solidify the medieval fantasy setting things are taking place in. Also, I needed someone to foil Calavera's dishonorable and selfish behavior. Alongside Calavera's curiosity and charismatic speech there was always a very ingrained moral bankruptcy and selfishness in him, making him a potential threat to all humanity. Freja is a great counterbalance since her views are always aligned with the honorable path of righteousness, truth and bla bla bla... Her attitude also gets tiring, but putting them both together in the same spot creates a good moral clash in every mission and raid. Her goal is to make Calavera's scientific endeavors work more towards the improvement of the life of people going through extreme poverty and disease, while Calavera's goal is to create an amazing and loyal henchwoman out of her. Things always are too complicated for either of them to get what they want, but I don't like to see people being successful.
Besides the moral confrontations, I needed someone to act as the traditional action hero, and Calavera is more of a weak, slightly coward thinker. Making him a terrible action lead, at first at least. But Freja is brave, strong and very good with a sword. She's the traditional Melee Warrior who has leveled up her stats to the max.
Samhain
On the other side of things... Calavera is a morally neutral character with the danger of falling into an evil alignment, and Freja tries to push him towards a morally righteous one. Samhain does the opposite. Coming from a mysterious land plagued by powerful monsters resembling all the Halloween legends that we (our universe) know of, Samhain is a creature that does not abide by human morality and has the natural tendencies of destroying and consuming as much as possible. Under special circumstances that are advantageous to both Calavera and Samhain, a pact is formed where this demonic representation of sadistic hedonism will work as Calavera's "henchpumpkin". While Calavera is technically Samhain's boss, Samhain's knowledge of beyond worlds is more than enough to sway Calavera into darker inquiries and decisions. Making it even harder for Freja to keep Calavera's research in line.
On top of his other-worldly knowledge, Samhain is by far the strongest in the team thanks to his monster powers, size and weaponry. Making it unwise to have him as an enemy. He serves as the Tank of the team being able to withhold immense damage, and of course also being able to deal great one. He lacks discipline and formal combat knowledge, which creates to opportunity for Freja to train what could become the most powerful warrior both on The Surface and wherever Samhain is from originally. (Old school Uranium Core followers already know exactly where he's from)
Zara
Zara is a bit of a scoundrel, but it's only because of the bad cards life has dealt her. Escaping prosecution due to her identity as a witch and losing her family, Zara has had to find the way to survive on her own in a world fearful of magic users. So, of course she won't mind stealing, lying and swindling to get enough money to buy food for the day (And maybe a little extra).
There are two reasons to have her be part of the team. First reason is that since I already have a DND team basically at point, I need a Mage. So in traditional Halloween fashion - this meant witch. The second reason is that Samhain and Freja are two morally and physically strong characters, so I felt like I needed someone for Calavera to be concerned about and care for. Zara could 100% kick Calavera's ass with and without her magic, for sure. But being both younger and completely alone in her world, she was a good choice as a character who actually needed help. So even if she's visibly a witch to all the people who are afraid of her identity, her being part of Calavera's crew actually makes it safe for her since now they'd have to face the entire team to get to her. She would never admit to being in a vulnerable position though, since her survival method has consisted in having a strong presence and scary attitude to the people she doesn't know.
So, now with 5 characters that are very different that I understand, writing scripts is insanely easy. I could write 90 seasons with them without sweating a drop. But you know what isn't insanely easy?
The Animation
I have finished working on the storyboard very recently. Believe it or not, carefully storyboarding an episode is actually a very difficult artform in on itself. I tried to make it look the best I could already, so the animation process went faster when the day came. I think It's the best storyboarding work I've done so far, but to be fair, my previous storyboard was way too amateurish. I did my research and studied cinematic composition for this one so I think with this project I've stepped up the level, but I probably can still learn more and even for this project, I will be fixing a few shots and angles here and there.
CG sucks, or does it?
So, just by looking at the storyboards you can see that indeed, all the backgrounds will be rendered with 3D models (Except for the horse, that's just a placeholder). The reason is that the entire mini-pilot has a total of 65 different shots. Which means in fact 65 different backgrounds. If I had to paint each individually it would take me 2 years to finish the whole thing. So, since last year I've been developing a method that heavily relies on toon shaders and other filters to make the background look surprisingly compatible with 2D animation. I'm not gonna lie, it still looks rendered in 3D software but, the four images above with concept art of the main characters have these types of backgrounds and I'm pretty sure they fit well with the style and genre, so I'm already committed to this implementation of 3D in a 2D cartoon.
Not only am I using 3D for backgrounds, but I am also implementing 3D models of the characters to rotoscope for some difficult action sequences. Is it cheating? Yes, it is. But I don't want to die before I'm able to animate an episode of this, so I'm taking shortcuts. I will not overuse this method, but it's simply a fact that animating Samhain Running and fighting will be a nightmare considering his rigid and complex design.
That's why I built and rigged a Samhain model, to animate him in 3D, and rotoscope him in 2D in a way that adds all that Uranium Core Style flavor which I've already proven works. For now I'm the only one working on the project, with help of a friend for a few in-between frames, but you know. I gotta get creative in order to make the process faster. Which reminds me of the other cheat I'm using.
Face rigs
While some people are a bit against the idea of using 3D models, I know even more people are against the idea of rig puppets, but hear me out!
I don't like rig animation, or at least I'm 100% sure that frame-by-frame animation looks better 99% of the time. But, especially with faces that are kept on model, these save a lot of time and make sure to keep that the characters look like themselves in every shot.
But it's true that the flash looking eye and mouth movements are a bit... oof... Well I came up with a solution for that that has already fooled a couple of people (people who know more about animation do notice it though). It's a simple concept. It's simply rigging the face animation, and editing the crap out of it. Here's a demo of what the animation style for the faces would be.
It's noticeable rigging, but at the same time there's a lot of frame-by-frame work done over it. The only things that remain static in this shot (other than the body, of course) are the skull, nose, ears and hair, which are the things that one would expect to not gesture any emotions (even though in cartoons they can and they do very often). But the eyes and mouth are essentially using the initial shapes created in the rig model, only as a starting point, meaning that I'm not just going to spam face gestures over and over throughout the scenes, but I will use the rig to place and time things where I want to see them in the final version, and then play with the rig a lot to make it look the less stale I can. I will still keep throwing fully frame-by-frame shots of faces as well every once in a while to keep things fun. Ideally if I ever get more budget (or any budget at all to hire artists), I wouldn't mind drawing every scene in frame by frame. But for now, I am one person, and this is what is going to help me make a pilot. Which we'll be able to enjoy...
Release date
Holy- It's gonna take me three months to complete. As I said before, the storyboard process was finished recently, so the final versions of the scripts were sent to my voice actors (AMAZING TALENT BY THE WAY, I will talk about that another day) And right now they are recording the lines for this short pilot. In the meantime I am working with the face rigs and 3D models a bit more. When the voice recordings are ready, I can start editing the audio and adding music (I also make the music). So let's say I start animating in December, if everything goes well. I also work a day-time job, so if I want to make the episode look good I can promise to finish one HIGH-QUALITY scene per day. I could rush it, but it's not gonna look good as it should, so I will carefully animate each scene with the appropriate amount of time and love required. Since it's a total of 65 scenes, that means that we are looking at at least 65 days of animating, which is what made me think of a realistic release date of February 10th approximately. But if the date comes and it's not good enough, I will not post a half assed episode. So maybe it's March. Hope not, but uhm... I'm in this for the long-haul, so yeah.
Watch me illustrate, animate and model
Since I've already shed out the stress of having to make the storyboard in time for me to send the scripts to the voice actors, now I feel like I can take a lighter pace than before, so on top of animating just one scene per day I have decided to stream my process so if anyone is excited to see the final product and understand my absurd workflow they can join in on YouTube Live streams of me working on it. Saturday 19th of November will be the first day of this new tradition and I will try to keep it up every Saturday from now on. So if you'd like to see that, you gotta go subscribe to my YouTube Channel or follow me on twitter to get that link. I'm inviting all the animation and blender nerds to join in and watch me suffer through the process.
YouTube: The Uranium Core
Twitter: @theuraniumcore
I can promise you this pilot will be the best I can make, which hopefully will look amazing.
I hope to see you guys in streams or in the comments of the episode posted right here on Newground and of course YouTube!
I'll get back to work and see ya later!
