We recently posted some of our behind-the-scenes with the Fighting Words team on their collaboration for the zany short THE STORY WILL BE REVEALED IN THE MOVIE and gave a peak into the sound recording process and the background design process.

We've got another peak behind-the-scenes for you now, this time from CG Modeller Fiona Healy who's going to take you through the character modelling process!

For THE STORY WILL BE REVEALED IN THE MOVIE I was approached to model a few of the main characters: Geremina - who is the damsel chair in distress, Kevin - who is one of an anthropomorphic army of moustache's, and the Moustache King - the main villain of the piece.

We started the process by importing a tidied up version of the children's character illustration to use as the reference and then we simply traced around it using planar modelling.

Check out the children's character illustrations for Geremina, the Moustache King and Kevin minion below, as you can see Geremina started her life out as Gerry the talking chair first:

We only deviated from the drawings slightly, if there was a technical requirement for the animation phase. This was an important element in working from the children's illustrations as we never wanted to let the technology or our personal styles limit or reduce the charm of their drawings, so we would always troubleshoot any issues to find the best solution possible to staying true to the children's work.

The models we then created were flat single planes to imitate the style of paper cut-out. So the modelling process itself was very fast.

We decided that a rigged 3D eye would be more efficient for the one-eyed Moustache King as it is his main feature and it gave the animators more control over his expressions. So I created his eye and a set of blendshapes (expressions) that enabled us to add a lot more of the emotional range depicted in the children's character designs.

The children's script, which they wrote with Maria O' Loughlin, is hilarious and the characters are so inventive and entertaining that we just couldn't wait to bring them to life. I was also able to help animate a couple of the shots which was really fun to do!

It was a real pick me up to work on THE STORY WILL BE REVEALED IN THE MOVIE, a well-organised production, helmed by Director Craig Kane and Producer Caoimhe Maguire with a talented crew behind it.

I can't wait to see it on a big screen!!

Fighting Words is a creative writing centre for children and teenagers, established by Roddy Doyle and Sean Love, and writing for an animated film is one of the numerous creative writing workshops they offer! 

Check out their website for details on events and how to get involved!