Hey CGC community , I'm working on a new animated short (or hobby short as I like to call them) which I'm calling "The Major's Magic". I'm doing this in my spare time and hoping to finish it in time for our country's independence celebration early next year. It would be great to get some feedback as I post works in progress to help me see what I might be missing or just to gain some perspective.
Here's the log line:
An imaginative little nutmeg tries to imitate the drum major’s magic only to be unknowingly helped by the enchanted drum major himself.
And here's the layout
Great start! I too am working on an animated short series with 
phoenix4690 which I will be creating a thread for very soon. Perhaps we can help each other with feedback :)
A couple of things that stand out to me at the moment :
1. I'm not sure on the nutmegs costume , it is a little confusing and doesn't really make sense to me.
2. If you hadn't explained in the blurb that the drum major was helping the nutmeg with the magic then I would never have got it visually. I think you need to add a shot that shows the drum major actually helping in some way to push this idea across to the viewer.
3. There is a shot of the drum majors hands where his arms appear to be missing :
Hope this is of some help. I look forward to seeing this progress and come together :)
Hey Matthew, Thanks for the feedback! I'd be delighted to help with feedback on your project also, looking forward to it.
Re. point 1: I'm not sure how familiar you are with nutmegs but maybe this image would help clear up some confusion for you. Here's what I did with him for our 2019 independence celebration.
Re. point 2: I'm glad you mentioned this. So the idea here is in the last shot (the close up on the major's hand) we see his fingers glowing with magic energy which fades away as he walks off screen thus revealing the true source of the magic. what do you think?
I'm really interested in seeing how I figure this part out as it would involve some vfx, which I'm clueless about. Should be fun.
Re. pont 3: Yes his arm is missing because I used the low res version of the cookieflex rig as a stand in for the major. I'm actually in the process of modelling him now.
Thanks again Matt, really appreciate the input.
Haha , ok I see what you mean now with nutmegs . Please excuse my ignorance , I have always seen them in this form :
But I just googled and I had no idea they looked like this initially :
I need to brush up on my nutmeg knowledge!
Ok so yeah , I did not realise that the animation was in such an early stage so I agree that with some vfx to make the fingers glow will get the point across visually.
That animation you showed is awesome man! I will definitely be asking you for advice on post processing and adding sfx to the animation as those are things i'm going to struggle with. phoenix4690 is going to be tackling the animation , and I will be modelling the scenes and assets but I have no clue about getting a nice professional look in PP or how to get nice sounds on there.
My project is in the early stages , and I have never done anything like this before so I would greatly appreciate any input you have.
Ha ha! yeah this is the innermost part of the nutmeg, after the shell and everything else is removed.
This is gonna be quite the adventure. happy to share whatever I can with you.
The Major is taking shape. Here is the character sculpt, getting ready to go into retopology. This is the first time I'm sculpting fabric so working in the wrinkles was pretty interesting. How did I do? @theluthier . I didn't bother to sculpt in the shoes since they won't be in frame.
I've put work on the Major aside for a bit to make some progress on the animation. Lot's to do and time waits for no one . Here's the blocking pass I've done so far. Comments & critiques welcomed. Your wisdom would be much appreciated as well @waylow
Great stuff Kurt!
It looks like your blocking is well underway.
My only crit at this stage would be that it's unclear where the bean is and wand is in relation to each other on the field.
I like your establishing shot (flappy flag) into the close up on Mr Bean. But I think you could use another wide shot in there to establishing their relationship to each other. You can see this in the POV (cam 01_05) but a wide shot somewhere sooner will help the audience understand where everything is (probably just before the Medium Long shot (cam 01_04)
But I really like your cinematic choices :)
Hey , that's coming along nicely , really good work. The detail on the major is awesome too. Keep it up!
Thank you Wayne! Really appreciate that feedback. I like that idea a lot, I'll be sure to implement it.
Onto the splining pass! Thanks again for the shot suggestion @waylow I really liked the idea. Hopefully the implementation works well.
Comments & Critiques welcomed.
Latest WIP update is here! It's been a lot of work over the past couple months but I'm finally inching closer to the lighting and rendering phase. How does it look?
I have no idea why the ground material is flickering in some of the shots but I suppose it has something to do with EEVEE and viewport rendering. I intend to use cycles for the final render and make my first foray into using a render farm. Tips or suggestions on that are most appreciated. What should I keep in mind when preparing the files? Are there any recommendations for low-cost/free farms? etc. etc.
Wow man , this keeps getting better and better! How much do you have left to do?
Hey thanks Matthew. This has been quite a learning process, I'm glad I started it. I'm just now finishing up the lighting and preparing to render. Then I have to tackle music and sound effects.
