Announcing "Pet Projects": a New Open Movie

After devoting over one year of focus to the topic of realism with Charge, it's now time to move in a new direction! Aiming at the holy grail of hyper-realism is not the only way to push the boundaries of what is possible with Blender. There are many more avenues to explore, many more workflows to cover. So what about a highly stylized, light-hearted animated episode?

Very early concept drawing by Rik and Vivien.

This was the pitch presented to the Blender Studio team: let's create something cartoony and serializable, so that the design language and animation style could be re-used consistently across multiple stories. This would be a good framework to go back to when the studio is in-between larger productions, and a useful foundation for artists to explore storytelling.

Concept art by Vivien.

The first episode of Pet Projects is being directed by Rik Schutte, with art direction by Vivien Lulkowski, and story and editorial support by Hjalti Hjalmarsson, with the whole team at Blender Studio involved in the production.

Here is the idea: An uptight engineer gets an unwelcome visit from a enthusiastic wannabe-pilot, causing both of them to be launched into the air inside an out-of-control space shuttle. Or, as Ton mentioned once, "developers are cats, artists are dogs"!

Given the target size and pace of the project (around 2 minutes of duration, around 4 months production cycle), technical challenges will be limited, with more focus on workflows and documentation. Sharing production knowledge is one of the key goals of Blender Studio!

There is potential for more extensive Grease Pencil use. As a matter of fact, the team has already been using the Story Pencil add-on to board the first versions of the short!

A sneak peek at the storyboarding workflow by Rik.

After a couple of months of development, Pet Projects is currently in pre-production and the progress can be followed here on the Blender Studio website.

Early concepts by Rik.

Stay tuned for more updates!