My biggest project so far. I worked on it for a total of 1 year.
Story
The story is about a melon. In the beginning, it is carried to different places by an unknown force. It eventually finds itself in a refrigerator. From there, it breaks out a small piece of itself that explores the world. On its journey it admires: a drop of water, birds, a garage and a forest. Just as he is about to start a journey a flock of birds, the whole world collapses and the big melon wakes up next to hundreds of other melons. It is awaited there by a dark ending.
Story Creation
To get a rough overview of the scenes, I made some shot sketches for large story blocks. This was especially helpful for the drone shots, since I only had the drone available one afternoon, so I had to know beforehand what I was filming so that nothing would be missing when editing. It also helped to give the movie a general structure.
Models
The melon was my first completely original character. Texturing, modeling and rigging, I did everything. When rigging, one particular difficulty was with the eyes. They had to look at a point in space that could be moved to any point. But I was able to solve the whole thing with a few bone constraints.
Poster
For the film, I have designed a poster. Unlike in the rest of the film, the melon here is a real model. I think that the poster feels more real compared to a CGI melon.
The model was 3D printed by a friend of mine, which meant that I only had to paint it. This also had its difficulties, since It was my first time painting a model, but I’m satisfied with the result.
Animation
The particular difficulty was the many VFX shots. 90% of the shots in the film are a mix of real footage and CGI. That took a lot of work because I didn’t know if the scene was going to look good while I was shooting it. Also, I had limited spontaneity as opposed to pure CGI.
Later in the film, birds send a message to the melon. The technical realization of the birds was not straightforward, but it worked out in the end. The scene is very much inspired by a scene from the movie “The Amazing Life of Walter Mitty”.