Coffee Brake

Synopsis

In the drab confines of a grey office, Gary and Carol await their daily respite: The coffee break. The highlight: A lone doughnut. The race for the last doughnut ignites as the clock strikes 3. Gary and Carol transform their office chairs into turbocharged racing machines, engaging in a high-speed chase through the office. But who will get there first?

The Story Behind 'Coffee Brake'

'Coffee Brake' was developed by the Master of Animation and Visualisation students at the UTS Animal Logic Academy as part of the emerging visualisation technologies project.  In addition to producing a high-end 3D animated short film each year, the students explore what new technologies are finding relevance in the animation and visual effects industries. In this particular year the students observed that realtime and open source animation technologies are increasingly being used in art departments for pre-visualisation as well as for production in TV and web series, games and cinematics. Also, 2D graphic effects such that can be generated using plug-ins like 'Grease Pencil' are being seen more often in productions. Tasked with developing an idea for a short animation to be produced in the open source animation software 'Blender', the students developed a range of story ideas that were pitched to an industry panel (which selected 'Coffee Brake'). The students than had just 8 weeks to design, model, rig, animate, surface, add effects, light and composite this lively and engaging short film.

Meet the Team

As a collaborative group project from the Master of Animation and Visualisation students, ‘Coffee Brake' has been developed from story idea, through all stages of production by the student group under the guidance of the team of Leads who direct and supervise the development and production of the project.

Digital Artists - Allyson Valencia, Angus Thomson, Benjamin Poate, Brandon Doray, Charlene Yeh, Chio Chi Chan, Hallam Roberts, Hollie Secomb, Ildy Izso, Jack Goold, Jake Schatzman, Jason Lin, Jessica Hutchinson, Jira Udomsri, Judisak Meng, Leinton Prem, Leon Bronkhorst, Matt Castley, Max Ayre, Morgan Wallish, Nathan Le, Nina Gao, Olivia Gonzalez, Patrick French, Peter Tran, Philippe R Huibonhoa, Ruben Luzaic, Sam Reilly, Songzhou Bian, Shaun Tan, Tamsin Tunnock, Tegan Plahn, Tri Duc Nguyen, Yihong He, Yilang Shi, Yuxuan Li and Zhanghao Liu

Technical Directors - Christa Zhang and Erin McManus

Production Coordinators - Sam Reilly and Shirley Yao

Hardware / Software

Hardware - HP Z4 G4 Workstation (Intel Xeon W-2265 / 128GB RAM / Nvidia RTX A5000)

Software - Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Blender, Maya, Houdini, Nuke, Adobe Substance Designer, Adobe Substance Painter, Adobe Premiere Pro and Davinci Resolve

Title Cards

Gary vs Carol

Poster - Concept Art

Poster - Final