Shot 2.2.11 - Threesome General Shot - WIP 🏇 (Patreon)

Hello everyone! 🐴

Kahl here, wishing you a great start to the year! The equine trio spitroast is currently in progress, and we’re deep in a shot where no hole goes unattended >:3

This shot’s been a fun challenge. Like we mentioned in the last post, there’s movement happening in every direction, and syncing all of that takes some work. The goal is to make everything feel like one smooth, continuous rhythm. Here's is how the general movement is going to be:

Looking good! But still pretty stiff and puppet-like 🧍(not to mention the absence of shadows and presence of glitchy lines). So, the next step is to refine the secondary movements such as deformations, drags, and facial expressions.

After the final lines were drawn, I like trying some variations of facial expressions I would like to add to the main loop. I will also see if I can implement some minor extra movements, but I'll wait until I have the main loop ready to do that!

Now, things are about to get technical, but this shot is a perfect opportunity to walk you through how our current workflow works and recap the process so far. 👁️

Here's a gif with each step detailed below:

Original 3D: So this is the very first frame of the blocking we showed you in the last post. I chose to start with this frame since I feel it has the characters in the most neutral positions to work on the details of the characters.

Adjusting Camera: Since I wanted Francis to be more straight, I noticed that I needed to pull away the camera slightly. It's better to have them a little further since Emi will play with some zoom-ins after the animation is done anyways.

First Version of Lines: With the 3D base as a back layer, I start working on fleshing out the details of the gesture and volumes for each character. There may be some major changes in poses (like you can see with Neil's arms), but overall I try to not strive to far from the original since it may affect the movements that I have already laid out.

3D Adjustment: I apply the drawn lines to the 3D models by making quick adjustments to the poses and models, and see if everything holds together with the movement I established. I may also make some changes to the poses and animation if I feel there is a need to (again, you can see this with Neil's arms).

Second Version of Lines: With the confidence that everything looks good in 3D, I apply the changes to the models back to the line drawings without any major changes.

Third Version of Lines: I refine the lines further to flesh out some details I may have missed before, since they were secondary. And, in this case, I made one last major change, this time to Francis. I felt that it would benefit him to show more of his strong back and butt, so he didn't look too flat and have some variation in the movement. So I turned him around a little (checking that it would not break the 3D animation) and officially finished the lines.

3D Sculpting: I further sculpt the 3D models to match the lines I drew. The hair is the part that takes the longest since it's a bunch of different cones that I gotta align one by one. Luckily, these boys are mostly short-haired.

Manual Grease Pencil Lines: Lastly, I drew the manual lines over the 3D models to nail down that first frame. With that, I "stick" the lines to the models and see how it looks with the rig animation under it. This is the result:

It shouldn't be long for this one to be finished, so please stay tuned! And, as always, feel free to let us know your thoughts. For now, we thank you all for your kind support and patience. We started this year (AwA's third one) super motivated to keep working on this, our fourth short, and we wish you the same with your own projects! ❤️

Lots of love!!

Kahl