The Blade Ballet

This is a short thematic animated sequence we did in a ten week time frame (5 weeks for pre-prod', 5 more weeks for prod' and post-prod'). The main goal was to quickly present a sport and magnify it by showing specific elements that we had to stage.

Our team's sport was: Fencing.

In this post, we will be giving you insight into our process for this sequence.

The Preproduction:

Our main staging idea was to mirror two fencing fight. A game between two disabled fencer which will parallel another game bewteen two nondisabled fencer's game. We had to mainly design a protagonist for each of the two fights.
The disabled's fight would show the fencers confronting each others in wheelchairs. 

The characters:

Props and environment:

As well as the characters, we had to create the setting as well as every props we needed for our sequence. 
We decided to set the sequence in a gymnasium.

Key-shot illustrations:

We decided to go for a subdued atmosphere with an almost pitch-black environment. We chose to do this in order to really put an emphasis on the movements and the silhouette of the characters. The setting is still there, but shrouded in darkness and dust would be covering the stage.

The Production: 

We then had to modelize, texture and rig all of the assets we planned. We opted for a stylised artstyle, but still with relatively realistic proportions for characters and objects. We did this in order to have an animation style closer to real life and be able to supplement it with effects which would make the scene spectacular.

Lookdevs:

Once the assets finished, we could start animating and rendering. After that, we had to complete our shot with compositing work and by adding visual effects. We notably added 2d FX such as motion trails and smears, as well as adding simulated 3d FX for adding fog in the background.

Shot breakdown:

And with all of that, here is part of the final result:

Our team:

Tristan Cambon : Concept, Modeling, Animation, Rig
Ilian Djabelkhir : Concept, Modeling, Animation, Rig, Audio Editing
Rebecca Faitot : Concept, Modeling, Animation, Rig
Tiffany Kao : Concept, Modeling, Texturing, Render, Compositing, Fx 2d
Alexandre Mouriès : Concept, Modeling, Texturing, Render, Compositing, Fx 3d, Video Editing