Personal Project - "A Buck for Christmas"

 This page will be used to document planning stages and processes of my personal Christmas animation project.

Story:


The story centers around Buck, a reindeer who discovers his wonder of Christmas by following a strange silhouette soaring through the sky one special night...

This animation project was inspired by my daily animation class exercises in Maya. Since Christmas is approaching, the first thing I usually think about this time of year is all the bright and colorful lights(and I'm always hopeful of snowfall). While working on walk cycles and animations for creature animation, focusing on horses that week, I thought of finding some sort of deer rig and trying to capture that delicate, graceful stride that deer seem to have. It was a small leap from doing just a deer run cycle to planning out an entire animation short, all within an afternoon. 

Storyboards:





Currently transferring my other storyboard pages to photoshop to cleanup.



North Pole Inspirations:

Building the North Pole is a challenging task as the lighting has to be done just right, and there is A LOT of lighting. To start with I've looked at figures of traditional-style Christmas villages for inspiration on scale and simplicity.

Friary Christmas Village.

Home Accents Holiday - Christmas Village Figure

Film Inspirations:

These are a few films I've thought of for ideas on how to build the North Pole and what features I need to include to make it look the part.


Fred Claus (2007)



Noelle (2019)



The Santa Clause (1997)


Musical Inspiration:


The inspiration to create this project also stems from listening to the soundtrack of Dreamworks' Rise of The Guardians animated film, in particular the track "Jamie Believes" and the main theme, "Still Dream". The melodies have inspired the framing of the shots as well as most of the story.

The music for the film was composed by Alexandre Desplat and the track "Still Dream" performed by Renee Fleming.




Previews:


RenderViews of a few frames in the first four shots.



Progress:

Rough renders of the opening shots, with a snip of the track "Jamie Believes" from the Rise of The Guardians album by Alexandre Desplat.



Final:

The final animated short.







Credits: 

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AMAROK

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