PACT WITH GOD - Behind the Scenes (Patreon)

Why I made this
A lot of practical reasons beside just wanting to have fun and practice. Ideally, I wanted my channel monetised before the Ersatz pilot drops to help recoup some of the cost of production, so I needed more content. My profile picture was long overdue for an update, particularly since I felt the proportions were off.
originally this (2022)

I'd been meaning to update my wing model as well, and this animation of the creature (called a 'princeling') is a throwback to some of my very first animated works.
Warning:
Not great (also from 2022)

Animation
I animated this after I'd finished Ersatz. What's important to note is that I delayed the Kickstarter until I'd completed my pilot, because I figured the Kickstarter would take the majority of my time and energy alongside finals, and I needed to wait for the audio production in any case.
Ersatz consisted of hundreds of shots, and I couldn't dedicate 200% to all of them or I'd burn out incredibly fast. But I still wanted to do my best with an unrelated animation and use what I'd learned on the project, which was a ton. I'd always associated Nero's Day at Disneyland - Pact with God with this character design specifically, so I figured it would be a fun exercise.

I animated this at 24fps, which I later baked on every 2nd frame, and added 'constant' interpolation so it would appear to be 12fps. This allowed me to make some moments fully 24fps - mainly when the princeling lands on the rooftop. I also added some subtle hand-drawn smears at this point.

I bounced my draft shots around my friends, and tried to incorporate as much feedback as I could. I wanted to put a lot of effort into this, since I'd spent so long trying to pace myself with Ersatz.

Additionally, I storyboarded this animation, which was something I tend not to do. I find it personally a little tedious, especially since I can pose 3D characters and make a rough storyboard that way, but I realised that this was a weak point. Ersatz wasn't storyboarded, and you'll notice in the pilot there are some compositions that would've benefitted from a stronger layout. So for this animation I did my best to make a storyboard in procreate. Even though it looks a little wonky, I tried to make interesting compositions - mainly trying to divide the 'camera' up.

For example, I wanted this shot to have distinct values on the left side (darker) vs. right side (brighter)

And vice versa for the last shot.

I'm extremely new to storyboarding and just trying to learn as much as I can, but I think it adds a lot. I'll keep doing this for short animations.

Wings

I have a special interest in animal aviation, so I'm always thinking about animating wings in 3D. The old model lacked a distinct patagium, and so looked overly angular and bony. The new wing model was modelled very closely off a turkey vulture, but there's still room for improvement. The marginal coverts stick up too much, resulting in a scruffy look, and the primary coverts spread too far, resulting in gaps in the wing.

These are definitely fixable, but it just means I need to tweak the wings some more. Once I finish that, along with creating a more user-friendly rig (it's the same rig setup as the old one, but can be a little awkward to use), I'll update the wing model I've got for sale here. I'll send the updated file to anyone who's purchased it.

Feathers

Modelled: Primary and secondary coverts, primaries and secondaries
Particle instance: Marginal coverts, body feathers

Note: 'grey strokes untiled' is a simple painted texture I made during Ersatz' production. You can swap this out for any rough texture; the purposes of this is to give the wings a patchy, specular look.

Background

The background consists of a sky and four buildings that I painted, some procedural paintstrokes (i.e a set of paintstroke pictures, randomised for colour - brought over from Ersatz' production), and edited collages from the Getty open access collection. They were super simple 2D planes in a 3D space, all except for the shot where the princeling lands on a surface - that is a simple brick texture on a rectangle model.

That's mostly all there is to it. If you have any questions, let me know. Thank you so much for the support!