A cowboy and professional chef duel to win a princess' heart. Oh, and Gordon Ramsay is also there looking for his next top chef.
Blocked out 3D backgrounds with final storyboards and movement created in Storyboard Pro and Blender.
Rendered 3D backgrounds and 2D animation created in Toon Boom Harmony, Blender and Adobe Premiere Pro.
Working with a team of two other 2D animators and a 3D artist, we first had to come up with a concept. The assignment was to fill in a Mad Libs prompt, come up with a script based on said-prompt, and then make an animation out of it. We presented our ideas and landed on a concept of mine:
A cowboy (who loves talking about his horse) and a world renowned chef duel for the princess' heart. Gordon Ramsay joins the scene and the princess falls for him instead, riding off into the sunset together on the cowboy's horse.
I took on the role of the director and worked on the concept art, rough storyboards, rough 2D animation and color. I also voiced the chef and helped perform the music!
We researched elements of classic Western films in order to better emulate the style: Tumbleweeds, duels at sundown, and a warm color palette to match.
With Gordon Ramsay being such a well-known celebrity, we had to make sure we could capture and retain his "likeness" within animation. I drew a lot of inspiration from Ramsay's show, "Hell's Kitchen," which is one of my favorites. Within the show, there's the "red team" vs. the "blue team," with each chef wearing a bandana of their teams' color: That's why the Cowboy and Chef both wear bandanas of one of those two colors!