Reset Pt. 1 (Image Collection)

Cover art for the music.

The full eviction notice held by Pietro.

Noogle. I'm feelin' Nooky.

Here's the full image of Nooks search results.

This was the first shot rendered. It told me that volumetric clouds and animating lighting flashing wasn't going to be a thing.

And then there was rain. OMG. More on that nonsense later. But it was nothing but painful to render.

This shot was also a doozy. Something in me said, "do more long shots!" and this was what I came up with.

But I didn't animate the crowd till way later, so I could re-sue walk animations.

This back and forth shot was all animated in one long scene and then rendered from different camera angles.

Beautiful man.

This was also an early rendered shot. I used it as a test bed to develop the atmosphere and lighting style for the rest of the video.

This took a bit of time. But all the animations I was to do here was going to be reused throughout shots.

I wanted DRAMA, OOZING from these initial shots. So I went for MEGA-GLOOMY

Like this! Where else are you gonna see a raincoat mob?

I thought this would be a fun shot to see.

Not so much do.

I dislike animating shots with high numbers of characters because it's often super tedious.

So i tried to break up the crowd shots with simpler ones.

That also still convey as much narrative as I can.

But that's difficult because you also NEED to see crowd reactions, or else nothing really has weight.

So I tried to find a balance.

This was another style developing shot to figure out the process for compositing mist/fog into the BG.

I also wanted to do rain outside of Blender to help reduce noise and render times.

But I figured it would result in more problems in compositing then just rendering it.

Which is a shame. Because rendering rain in the shots made them heavier to work with.

And introduced a lot of noise. But I just took the L's so that every shot didn't cost days to render.

Like this, for example, originally had volumetric clouds in the sky. But it made the shot take forever to render.

And to speed it up meant making it noiser. So I removed them and opted for a simpler sky.

Then there was the water droplets on the characters.

I spent a few days trying to figure out a cheap-ish way to do water pouring down their raincoats.

I ended up using a 2D rain shader mixed with a Geometry Nodes system that slide water beeds along their surfaces

It wasn't perfect. But It worked well enough to get the effect.

Nothing too crazy here. Just peepepoh looking confused.

Boy did I really wanna do this gag.

But by the time it came to actually make the image, I had so little energy.

Same goes for phone screens. Couldn't be bothered. But we DO IT FOR THE ART.

Whoh, where is he now?

Tom in "The Setting."

Another crowd shot. I tried to frame it so it looked dramatic, but also cut out half the crowd to reduce work.

Also this gag. Been sitting on this for forever.

I was originally going to do a more 1:1 from the game, but decided I'd prefer to see the crowd.

But Nook gets to watch.

One of the easiest shots to do. I wish they were all like this.

I also really like dramatic camera sweets and movements.

Alrighty, time for "The Conversation."

This sequence was, as you might have guess, really easy going. It's almost all singles.

I break up character animations into reusuable chunks.

Like him clicking, nooks nose/talking bob, their idle movements, etc

I just layer them all together so that it's a little bit faster to finish their movments.

But then you get these special movements.

Oh, and this pixel transition! This was developed later and re-used here. Originally, this was supposed to "explode" in reverse(?). But it looked hella-ugly.

Anywho, so animations, yeah, this sequence was super delicious.

I was able to do most of it in about 2 days.

Mask barely moves.

Nook is the only one with life here.

He's feeling SO powerful until-

What's this?

OMG IT'S-

A CALLBACK TO THE FIRST EPISODE!?

OMG, HE'S BEEN PLANNING ALL ALONG. Would you believe me if the last line's been there since the beginning? That's what was cut off.

At the time, I thought it was funny.

So we doubled down on it throughout the series. I wanted to do broken wood here to further imply weight, but didn't.

I also wanted this to be more extravagant, but opted to do just a simpler pan instead. Saved times.

OKAy, BIG CAMERA MOOVE.

WOOOSH.

Holy cow, this shot took like 10 hours to render.

I rendered it ONCE. And said "whatever we get it what we get." And imo, it came out pretty good!

OH! I also ran into a bunch of animation problems.

Like I'd spend a bunch of time animating a shot.

Only to open it later to find it irreversibly broken.

And I'd need to spend and evening re-animating faces or characters.

Like this shot. It was rendered later then others because most of the characters broke right before rendering.

This one, Jacob broke and vanished.

Specifically, LOLLY broke in this one.

But damn do I love that lighting. So all is forgiven.

Easy shot. Also if you didn't notice, Pietro is no longer holding the paper. Fudge animating a shot of him just putting it away.

This was added way later to help with the sequence flow.

And this was the shot used to develop this pixel deletion effect.

I experimented with a couple different styles, when suddenly, a tutorial from 3D Singh VFX came showing how to make this exact effect.

I screamed and re-did all the dissolve shots immediately. You're not reading this, but thank you 3D Singh VFX. GO check him out.

I REALLY wanted the paper just to have it fall in this shot. But that meant committing to having him have it the whole time prior. And thus, more work.

MOODY. DRAMA.

OMG, MORE DRAMA.

PEPITOOO! I wanted this to look more violent, but I'm also no FX artists. So it's good enough.

Crowd reaction!

Yes, that's the reference.

But also, who wouldn't do it?

Anywho, BACK TO THE DRAMA

This shot also used to look more violent, but I needed up toning it down. Originally, his coast was also glitching out, but didn't want it on the flop coat shot.

RUN

Oh my. Blender particles gave me such strife.

But all is forgiven for shots like this.

The only other shot with visible clouds.

I should have added more shots to help with pacing. But that would mean she turns to a crowd, and I didn't wanna do more crowd.

Now we get to just make cool looking shots!

There wasn't much of a plan or method when first blocking out this sequence.

I just told myself, "it needs to be SAD and EPIC"

These shots of them running where all done in one big shot.

I just cut between 3 cameras while they all run in a straight line.

I wanted to do more lighting, but at this stage, I had run out of "animation energy"

So I did a couple and just left it at that.

And tried to make up for it with some dynamic looking shots.

I was worried that this just made it looks cheap.

But then eventually, I was like "eh, no one is going to think that. And if they do, that's okay. Anything more is more work."

I had blocks where I just needed to so SOMETHING. But I also needed to show the progression of "deletion" somehow.

This was going to be omitted in another version of the edit. But I re-did the song which made the sequence a bit longer.

And because of that, I had to re-shuffle all the shots.

So I decided to use the opportunity to keep more of the "whoa" shots at the end and let the others build up to them.

It made everything flow a lot nicer imo. But the shots clearly vary in creativity.

I held a whole livestream to make this set.

Only to completely blow it out with red.

And that's another thing. I was very worried that it "all looked to red."

But lie, bro, it's the fricken apocalypse.

HE'S DISSOLVING TO LORD KNOWS WHERE.

OH NO, NOT DOTTY

I was going to have a bolt of lighting strike in at the last minute, but it kept looking ugly. So I didn't do it.

Same here. Had a strike. But in trying to fix rendering issues, I decided that the imagery was strong enough on its own. So I let it be.

This was re-rendered a few times.

Mainly just to address the trees. They were bouncing because of the ground.

I'm sorry Hippeoux. You don't deserve this.

RED

Big shot. Long swoop.

I can never gauge how long I should make them talk for.

I always tweak what they're saying in the edit, so I just make them bob for prolong periods of time.

I also tried doing parallel lookin' shots.

Like between both scenes, we're sharing the same camera angle.

But back to talking.

Reuse of Isabelle run from earlier.

Re-use of literally the last shot but from a different angle.

Tom just bobs and talks. I always find it awkward having text on for to long. No-one REALLY wants to hear their mumbling.

Another parallel.

Aw, you can still see the ugly hat.

This shot was so aggressive. I love it.

And one last parallel.

I thought about doing this for a while. I think it came out decent. I was also going to a big glow effect but couldn't get it looking nice enough.

:)

AND SHE WAKES UP SOMEWHERE NEW?

Omg, it's so pretty.

MEGAN?!

HUH?

WHAT'S GOING ON?

This shot took like 10 hours to render. Would have been faster, but I wanted grass.

That's it! Thanks for reading!