Embedded Files
Early Concept Art
The story of Adrift was created from Stone Mahnich's early art (below). Many of our main creators were struggling with feelings of loneliness and isolation at the time, and wanted to use their art to express these emotions. Adrift came together under these feelings.
Pre-Production
The Script
Our script began shortly after Stone brought concept art to the table. The script underwent many different revisions. Our final draft was nine pages long, which eventually had to be whittled down during the storyboard and layout phases.
The Concept Art
Our artists began creating concept art as the script was written. It was focused around our two main characters, Luno and Nova.
Luno Turnaround by Carson Johnson
Luno's character was based on his laid-back personality and creative sense. We chose a cool color scheme for him, basing him in a green skin tone and moving toward blue clothing. Originally, all characters were meant to have a bright, colored aura that matched their skin tone. The vibrancy of the aura would then be adjusted based on the mood of the characters, which would clarify the emotions of each scene since there was no dialogue included.
Nova Turnaround by Al Fontanilla
Nova's character was originally designed to be slightly feminine but definitely confident. We decided to give her a warm color scheme to exude the vibrancy of her personality. She was supposed to have bright orange skin, but as tests were done with the final models and light rigs, a more neutral skin tone was chosen.
Ship Concept Art by Stone Mahnich
Luno's spaceship (left) was meant to be a piece of junk, something that had been abandoned years ago. The original idea was that it was a sort of clubhouse for Luno, a safe place he could retreat to when the world was overwhelming. Our surfacing artists took these details and made sure the wear, tear, rust, and disuse was apparent in the build of the final model.
Nova's ship was meant to be sleek, fast, and modern. The colors were much brighter and more vivid, emphasizing the care that she puts into maintaining it. This ship is only seen for a couple of seconds in one of the shots, but it is still a high quality model worth praise.
City Art by Various Artists
The city was based on a combination of different aesthetics. We wanted something clean, with depth and detail befitting the alien planet. The above art is the concept for the main street. This set was originally featured heavily in the film, but, due to time constraints, was simplified and used only in the flashback scene .
The original idea included high-poly background characters that interacted on a large scale with Luno. However, as the story continued to develop, we realized that our background characters were too complex. We did not have enough resources to create a good variation in our crowds and several of our departments would have struggled to meet deadlines if these designs had been used. For these reasons, a new background character was developed (see right).
This character takes the place of the previous four (see left). It has a simple model and rig, which saved a large amount of time during the process. It allowed for Luno to stand out in the crowd during the flashback, and it gave our compositors more flexibility with color.
The Storyboards
Story boards by Carson Johnson and Al Fontanilla.
Our storyboards went through many different passes, making the length of the short film the most difficult thing to pin down. When we first started creating the story boards, we wanted to include a lot of extra details that we felt, at the time, were necessary to tell our story. After bringing Adam, our production manager, on to the project and beginning to discuss our story more with Kara Oropallo, we realized that the scope of our original vision was too large. We spent several weeks refining our boards and focused on keeping only what was necessary to tell the story that became Adrift. Ultimately, this meant that a lot of our original work didn't make it into the final cut. On the left are two scenes from the earliest pass of boards. In them, it can be seen that similar elements and key moments were chosen from these passes to be included in our final cut.
The video on the right is the final set of boards. This pass was done at a time when layout was beginning work and pre-production had not yet wrapped on story boarding. The reason for the blend of both 2D and 3D boards was because we needed layout to experiment with camera angles when we were having a hard time visualizing in 2D. By having both pre-production and layout working on boards, we were able to move more efficiently.
Modeling
Once given the pre-production artwork, modelers would start by creating low-poly proxy models to be used in Layout. They would then fine-tune their designs based on feedback and create a high-poly version to be used in the short. Some of these assets would travel through several hands before being finalized and multiple iterations were created as the story behind the short was defined. The team saw a lot of changes and new faces throughout the production, but we all worked together to create high-quality final assets. We worked together with Rigging and Layout to ensure that our models were to scale and easily imported for future use down the pipeline.
-Nicholas Garces, Modeling Lead
Surfacing
While some modelers UVed and Surfaced their own work, it was often the case that a surfacing artist would be given a modeled asset and some pre-production surfacing reference to get them started. This team also saw a lot of changes, but we worked quickly and diligently, working hand-in-hand with the director to make sure the color, one of the most important aspects of the film, was flawless. Once surfaces were finalized, a lot of work went into transferring these surfaces correctly to the rigged models as many of the rigged models had not been completely UVed. This took some crafty maneuvering within the Node manager to get the UVs transferred without leaving behind a transfer attributes node and slowing down rig animation. Once transferred and applied, the surfaced rig could then be imported into animated scenes and lit to be rendered, making them compatible with future pipeline use.
-Nicholas Garces, Surfacing Lead
Rigging
An often overlooked step in the pipeline, rigging bridges the gap between modeling and animation, giving animators intuitive and accessible controls to better accomplish their work. Essentially anything that moves needs a rig of some sort, ranging in complexity from a button to a character's face. For organic assets, rigging artists control how modeled geometry deforms under the influence of joints, or bones, in a hierarchical skeleton. For Adrift, the rigging team needed to hit specific poses and facial expressions using the character models provided for us. It was crucial for our characters to express their emotions effectively, especially in a short film without any dialogue.
-Issac Shuey, Rigger
Layout
Layout is all about planning, figuring out, and preparing the cinematography aspects for a film. Throughout this short, my team and I mainly focused on laying out the scene for each of the shots, animating the camera, and creating temporary character animation. This is done to pre-visualize each shot before the animation begins. I want to say everything was smooth sailing, but the team did encounter a few bumps on the way. One of the challenges we faced was the length of the short. Initially, the short was double the length it is now. This was because we felt that we needed to include as many key points as possible. Due to the time constraint, we found a way to shorten the film's length without affecting the integrity of the story and the message we wanted to get across. At the end of the day, I had an incredible team that worked their hardest to recreate the vision the director had.
-Hanna Gi, Layout Lead
Animation
For the Animation team, we worked around the clock helping each other out and solving the problems we ran into. I think one on the weirdest parts of working in animation is all the strange little problems we would get out of the blue for no reason, like eyes randomly crossing, or a character turning green out of the blue. We had to do a lot of trouble shooting but, because of our fabulous team, we could work through these problems together and always got it fixed quickly! Working in animation is a lot deeper than most people think. It's not about just moving the character. Its about getting the right expressions and body movement to really bring a character to life and evoke the intended emotions in our audiences. One of the hardest parts is making sure every shot flows together; for example if a face is in a certain position in one shot, then it should look exactly like that in the following shot. Overall, I think everyone was so committed to this project and willing to learn and put in the work and time to make sure it was exactly what the director wanted! For the animation team, we all had a really fun time working together and supporting each other through the whole process!
-Gillian Phillips, Animation Lead
Lighting & Compositing
As the lighting lead for the film. my primary duty was to make sure we had light rigs that were easy to use and understand as well as providing support for the team. Light rigs are really important for maintaining continuity throughout the short. I would help give notes along with the director on the lighting of various shots as well as address any issues my team was facing regarding the look or feel of the lights. The process, all in all, was fairly straightforward on the lighting end. I would say the main hurdle we had to overcome was maintaining a consistent look. Even when you have a standard light rig that doesn’t always mean shots will come out exactly the same. Sometimes certain shots will require a different approach and if that was the case then I would have my lighting artists share their light set ups with one another to maintain that continuity. Collaboration between artists is a really key aspect to getting a short film finished and my team made sure to do that to the absolute best of our abilities. Overall, the process of working on this short was both exciting and challenging. I am thrilled with how the team and I really banded together to get this done in a time of uncertainty and doubt.
-Sean Matthews, Lighting Lead
VFX
Much of the look and feel of Adrift was dictated by compositing within Nuke, but VFX was responsible for creating and animating masks that could be used to create the spread that we see throughout the film. VFX is one of the last stages of the pipeline; it required the final renderings of each scene and the associated alphas to be able to isolate characters from the background. This allowed me to animate masks that travel over our main character Luno and create little blotches on items like his painting and backpack. During the flashback scenes, the frame rate is reduced to give a picture book feel. This meant that the VFX only needed select frames from these scenes to match and move with this picture book feel. At times the effect would be the only thing changing, giving it a large focus and providing a dynamic feel to otherwise still shots.
-Nicholas Garces, VFX Lead
Sound & Composing
Sound design is about creating audio effects to accompany what you see. We work with the director to make sure the short sounds like what she envisioned. During the early stages we recorded some temporary audio that we ended up utilizing in the final version because Covid19 prevented us from getting back into the studio. We also utilized soundideas.com to help find some of the effects that we could not record. After finding these, we would take them into Pro Tools and edit and combine them with other recordings. This makes the track sound "full" and eventually the overall product makes the audience feel as if they were a part of the short. We were also responsible for coming up with original score. For music, we sat down with the director talked about what we needed to feel at each point of the short. Then Jonathan, with his great wisdom in music, wrote out a song. Due to Covid19, we were unable to record with live instruments, but we were able to find synthesized instruments and edit them into the final track.
-Allison Wuensch, Sound Lead
In Conclusion . . .
Overall, this was an incredible project to work on. From pre-production, all the way through sound, I feel like all of our artists and our leaders learned more about their own craft as well as other departments. We are very proud of what we were able to accomplish in a years time and we can't wait to see where we go from here!
-Alexa Boushey, Director
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