May 3, 2010
I really liked this pitch we created for a new Nickelodeon cartoon called Monty’s Magic Words. Nickelodeon used to (maybe they still do) commission directors and animation studios to pitch new cartoons once every 2 or three years. If picked up the cartoons would be given a single season with the hope of stretching the production out into 2-4 seasons. Depending of course on the popularity of the show.
The thing that put Nickelodeon appart from other pitches commissioned by agencies, is that Nickelodeon awarded funds to generate the animation! It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough that small studios like ours were able to try and pitch new shows!
On Monty’s Magic Words, I was playing 2D lookdev in aftereffects, and then lead compositor and 2D pipeline lead once we ramped up production. We utilized the after effects template workflow we created on Little Spirit pretty effectively. The lighting team could kick off a batch of same-as shots, have them render over night, then the AE autocomp template load those images and generate composites, which would then get quicktimes autogenerated for editorial. It was a pretty fun system, and allowed a small team to do a great deal more lookdev on more shots than on regular productions.
The most fun part of this who gig for me, was the trees:) I created the shading method for applying the circle paper leaves. They were completely CG those trees! I lost the turn-arounds I created, but it was super fun getting to play in maya a mental ray again.
Below are the turn-arounds we showed to the agency.