The Pilot (Animated Short)

Wait a minute...

This isn't Animal Crossing?

But maybe?

I mean, K.K. Is here

But his planes on fire?

Oh, but thank heavens, his guitar survived.

Densle, this has to be related to that guy wearing a mask, right??!

No, this world is not like his home.

It's dark

Dirty

and different

He's stranded here, on his own

Wandering alone

In a forest, like a labyrinth

Under a sky that doesn't change

And all he can do is be dazed in this maze.

Or until he hears something.

Anywho, so his fur, yeah?

Fur was an early decision. I wanted him to match better with the surrounding style.

But "goofy and floofly" is a very easy look to fall into. And I didn't want that.

He needs to look detailed up close.

Catch and break up lights around his silhouette.

But remain relatively smooth and uniform at a distance.

Which I think was achieved thanks to a plugin called gFur for Unreal.

It' made implementing, grooming and working with fur a lot easier then through traditional fur routes.

But in some cases, it can render a bit splotchy.

But not all. I'd say it looked fantastic is 95% of shots.

Especially close-ups.

Then there's the choice of him speaking.

"Through the trees"

"Through the leaves"

"Past the bushes"

"And all the weeds"

"Forward"

"Cries the breeze" Is a moment that just can't be done with gibberish.

I tried the Animalees approach first, but it didn't sound appealing.

I wanted a distressed, talking cadence. And that just couldn't be achieved with "ways, nahs" and animalees speak.

Look at this guy

Cluelessly stumbling around a procedurally generated forest.

There isn't really a lot to say about the forest.

I built a forest generating system to minimize environment work.

The entire "forest" is spread out across 8 different smaller levels.

This crash site being one of them.

And this montage sequence is it's own map.

And speaking of this montage, it was the part most heavily re-edited.

There were a bunch of other shot's due to flow.

Though, this was just an excuse to make a bunch of pretty pictures.

Interspliced with repurposed crash sequence shots.

And these aerials!

Big mystery! Though, I still need to work on large space lighting.

Alright, so the rift.

Big, bright and alien.

Almost like a crack in space-time, perhaps?

Giving visions and stuff.

Or at least that's what he says.

And then poof. Gone.

Scans his face

And says hello.

Strange.

The best example of the fur looking perfect.

A surprise to no one, I couldn't do Animal Crossing forever.

So, although we begin with something familiar...

Our boi is embarking on a far greater adventure.