"GOAT & AARON"
Like 3 Dislike 0 Published on 13 Dec 2013
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Short film 5:52
Director:
GABE ASKEW
Production:
HORNET INC.
Animation:
HORNET INC.
www.hornetinc.com
Hornet Inc. director Gabe Askew in Los Angeles: "The whole project started as a series of illustrations. I was lying in bed one morning, looking at the dust twinkle in a shaft of light from the window. I rolled over, grabbed a sketchbook and very roughly sketched out about ten images that I wanted to create. The script tying them together came later.
"I was really keen on getting away from the computer and approaching a project the way I approach illustration. This is why each shot is formatted differently. After storyboards, each shot began as a painting, which I took into 3D and projected onto geometry. I'm not sure this technique is right for other projects, but it was a refreshing break from the normal process.
"This was my first attempt at writing a linear narrative so I was reading a lot about screenwriting, talking to other directors about storytelling and learning as I worked. It seemed like every month I wanted to recreate the project into something else.
"The story, more than anything, was an exercise on something Walter Murch talked about. He spoke about how you want the audience to complete the story rather than spell everything out for them. So I set up a story about a conflict between two brothers and then I removed the conflict from the story so you are left with a gap to fill in yourself. I'm still learning, but I feel like I emerged a better artist from this.
"Because this was a personal project, we didn't really have budget to hire a technical director, which wasn't a problem until I realized that I had to figure out how to do all these particle effects and chain simulations myself. I'm less familiar with Maya so it took some figuring out. For the close-up chains, I simulated them as rigid bodies, but for the wider shots, I simulated strips of cloth and wrapped the chains to them. And particles in Maya...not terribly intuitive.
"Most of the work was done on my awesome HP laptop and rendered on Hornet Inc.'s render farm. We worked in Maya, rendered with V-Ray, composited in After Effects, oh, and painted on Aquarelle Arches watercolor paper.
Schedule: "It was about six months of writing, rewriting, and designing between commercial projects. The actual production was about six weeks. Pretty fast for a film that's almost six minutes. CG animator Jeff Lee, 2D animator Jake Armstrong, and producer Jan Stebbins made this possible. They were awesome."
For Hornet Inc.
Director: Gabe Askew
Writer: Gabe Askew
EPs: Michael Feder, Greg Bedard
Producer: Jan Stebbins
Editor: R.J. Glass
CG character Animation: Jeffrey Lee
2D animation: Jake Armstrong
Character models: Erwin Riau
Character rigging: Stanley Ilin, Phil McNagney
Environment illustration/modelling: Yenni Askew, Gabe Askew
Voices: Jeremy Levy as Goat, Ambrose Martos as Aaron
Audio post: Beatstreet Productions, NYC
Sound design: Matthew Longoria
Recording engineer: Jeff Malinowski
Music: Substitute Sandwiches
Toolkit
PSaint, Maya, V-Ray, After Effects