Project Start - Lift To Work

What am I going to do next?

My next project is going to have more of a macro focus. I'll have in mind to include interactions between Jay and Chance again, mainly sheath play and Chance manhandling Jay's car.

I'm an actually awful 2D artist😅but this is my rough animatic for the animation I want to create for you! (I really need to get in touch with an artist to do these better in future animations >.>)

1. Jay is in the car, singing happily.

2. The ground shakes as Chance's footsteps rumble closer

3. People run past, shocked

4. Jay gets curious and freaks out as a car parked along the road gets crushed under Chance's hand.

5. Jay tries to speed away, but the wheels spin and he doesn't get far before Chance pins his car to the spot.

6. Jay tries to get away but he and his car gets picked up to Chance's face.

7. Chance's breath fogs the windshield over as he rumbles something like "I was going to give you a lift to work!"

8. Chance lowers the car to his sheath and we watch from inside the car as he slowly lowers the car in.

9. The lights of the car will have to light up the inside. This is a tricky shot that I really hope I can pull off! I want to add some precum in there, of course ^^

10. Chance pulls the car out and places Jay's car down on top of a building. Saying something about private parking... But he knows it's just so Jay will need him to pick him up after work.

11. Jay stumbles out of the car and looks out at the street as Chance strolls away.

If you have comments or suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them! I can't say whether I can add them in or not but I'd love your input! This should be a much faster animation than the last, as the bulk of that animation was the complex character interaction.

What's the current progress?

I'm working on the first shot that you saw in the animatic!

I'm creating and setting up the whole scene. Currently I'm using KitBash3D assets to construct the city setting, and setting it up in Houdini Solaris. It's a little complex to add my assets there as moving, duplicating, and especially editing assets requires a lot of extra steps. But that's how KitBash adds objects to Houdini, and it's how I intend to render it as well... So I might keep this process or I might change it.

I've also been modelling and setting up road elements that I'll be manually adding and aligning. It's a bit of a process😅

I've also been playing around with car simulation in Houdini. They have a shiny new tool to create car simulations that seem to work really well for driving and crashing cars! It's definitely something I want to play around with for large scale car carnage :3

But it was so hard for me to get it to crumble and lift in Chance's hand. Instead it would always completely snap apart and fall back to the ground. I imagine a giant hand lifting a real car would be tough on the structural integrity of the vehicle xD but I don't really want Jay to be THAT roughed up.

So I'm in the process of manually simulating the car body, the tires, and the glass.

I'm still missing the glass here, as well as some tire smoke and random debris! I imagine the lift might be a LITTLE too rapid for Jay to be comfy in there.. So I might have to slow that down😅

I'll try to get back to you with an update on the shot when I've gotten closer to a complete scene🧡