Production Recap July 17th to 21st

Last week on Pet Projects...

Shots kept going back and forth between animation CBBs, FX updates and lighting renders. Which was a good sign! It meant we had the time to address the 'not so essential' notes and fine tune the image. As the end of production looms over the Studio team, it felt good to see so much green on our production tracker.

Something pretty special happened at the beginning of the week: the music was recorded with a live orchestra, for the first time in the Open Movies history! The whole team, and Rik especially, cannot wait for the community to hear what Mariana composed. Although the recording session took place in Los Angeles, Mariana gave us a link through which we could listen to it live. And afterwards, she sent us videos recorded during the session. I bet our videographer Haru will make something out of them!

It was all the more special to see the music come to life this way as it reminded us of older cartoons and their behind the scenes: silly bangers and drama-filled tunes being played on violins, cellos and double bass. One more hommage to this genre!

Fine tuning and corrections

Procedural Shading Cleanup by Simon.

On the Amsterdam side of production, while Rik was still grinning at the thought of the music, shots were being reviewed in lighting and getting their final tweaks. Simon set on a mission to correct the toon shading popping here and there, and all the frames that flicker too much.

In the mean time, Vivien kept on providing lighting direction through paintovers. For some shots, it was to help solve a flicker issue, for some others it was about the atmosphere; for a few it was both, as in the example below. Also, after looking at the edit coming together more and more everyday, Vivien wanted to add quite a big change: more red on the windows of the interior of the rocket when the emergency light blinks. Not a small ask as it impacted more than 10 shots, most of them already "final" approved... Magic (aka Andy) happened and now the shots are all the more beautiful for it.

Vivien's paintover to redirect the lighting - notice where the shadows fall.

Title choice and design

After a bit of back and forth, Francesco and Rik settled on a final title. The "Rickety Rocket" was too much of an internal joke as well as a series that had really existed, some years ago. I won't reveal the final choice here, yet, but will give this away: it will please the wordplay lovers as well as the dad-jokes connoiseurs.

One of the early versions for the (previous) title.

Post-what?

At the Studio we are eager to start our final week of production! Beau and Pablo can go on to other tasks while Andy, Simon and Rik put the final touches to our little adventure. Also, we started working on the credits, always a nice way to remember the work that has been done.

What is left to do? More fine tuning next week, final EXRs renders, and in August, the sound post-production!

Pet Projects is currently in production and the progress can be followed here on the Blender Studio website.

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