BLACK CURTAIN is a short CGI film about a young woman and small child who are running from a world bearing down on them – They run to escape that which they fear the most. Will they succeed, or fall victim to it?
I hope you all enjoy the short. This film was made entirely in Blender (Apart from some compositing in AE) using eevee as the render engine, with a custom made toon shader. It was modeled, rigged and animated by myself.
Animation was completed on 2’s and the camera work is on 1’s to give it that classic animation feel.
Excellent job. The pacing is spot on as well as the composition and framing (love the top view street run and the final zoom out scenes), camera work, light and color, etc etc. Really impressing and inspiring! (Kudos to the person who made the sound and music as well).
Curious, how long did the production take? Did you go through any personal ‘ahas’ (huge or tiny) in terms of methods and production? Like hurdles you found some new way to overcome, new approaches, things like that.
Honestly the idea (and by extension the world i have in mind) has been milling about in my head for a long time, but I didnt really settle on a look until around 2020 not long after the Eevee render engine came into maturity. That and the evolution of the grease pencil toolset really cemented that anything was possible on a shoestring budget. Suddenly the stylisation I wanted to achieve wasn’t blocked by some strange paywalls or extensive compositing, which was definitely the case without it.
I know its a weird one but the advent of blender 2.8 and the rehauling of the dependency graph also helped. Before then, spline IK was pretty much unusable, but now it was possible to get the kind of rigs I wanted. I know bendy bones exist, but they still have limitations, so i wanted the freedom that spline IK offers (sliding toon arms, and even better, infinite twist along bone chains).
Character design wise I always knew I wanted an “anti-pixar” look - leaning harder and harder into a flatter look with harder edges and such. You’ d be surprised at how difficult that is. I still don’t think I got there a hundred percent but it’s far more than i had expected to get. Im hoping to push it further in my next film for sure!
Other more general hurdles like what to do about background elements and stuff were a result of happy accidents. I knew i didnt really want to go crazy with them so i slapped on my custom toonshader as a placeholder and very quickly came to the realisation that this was “the look” that the film was meant to have. minimal texturing, simple geometry etc. It became less a challenge of detail and more a challenge of composition and camera placement which i really liked.
My biggest hurdle of them all though was personal. Trying to allocate time between having to dedicate my creative hours to real world things like making money and producing tutorial content came at the expense of making sure the film got made. That and just having a life and making sure I wasn’t ignoring those I care about.
As beautiful as Arkane series! and for me that is the best compliment I can think of.
I like the finished result (characters appearance, expressions, colors, camera movements, stylized cartoon effects etc) as much as the story and the mood that comes from it.
A really worth watching experience (if that is the expression, my english is too basic, sorry)
Bravo!
