Crustaceans, Robot Antenna, Tuned Percussion

Hey Everyone!

Just thought I'd give you a little sneak peek of some WIP things that are happening on the Space Cadet feature film.

Oh wow!! How adorable is this little crustacean?! This is a WIP front view of a hermit crab who will have a small scene in the film where it tries on various bits of litter it finds on the beach as potential homes.

One of my fondest memories from childhood would be going to the rocky beaches of Vancouver and observing all the little creatures that lived in the tide pools. My father would flip the rocks over and underneath them there were dozens or sometimes hundreds of little creatures that would be hiding there. I remember seeing insects, barnacles, snails, anemone and various crustaceans. 

Hermit crabs were among my favorite things to see and watch on the beach.  Looking forward to seeing this crab do its thing in the movie!

Here is a drawing of Robots head:  

Just trying to see. How to rig the antenna to move. Also testing some eyelid (shutter) options in sketch form to see what type of expressions are possible. 

Here's a WIP mesh that artistst at the CG studio made of the robot's head. As you can see there are many places you can decide to bend or distort the lines to give it a little wonk. Also you can delineate how you want the shapes to be able to rigged to animate. We will be going for a more puppet style (similar to Nufonia live and The Storyville Mosquito) so we've decided to not animate the faces too squash and stretchy, but instead let the emotion come more from head tilts, neck movements and subtle antenna moves. The eyes will be lenses and have shutters and a small range of movements for expression.

While I'm on tour this weekend, I had to write a music cue for one of the scenes. 

I didn't have any paper, so I started writing on my luggage ticket LOL. But then ran out of space so I went to the front desk and asked the lady some paper. I then mapped out one of the scenes. This is for a scene where Celeste (Space Cadet) and playing a mini duet with her mother, Stella. I was making these notes for one of our storyboard artists so we can draw very specific storyboards for the animators later making sure that the tine bars that are being hit actually correlate to the soundtrack. 

Anyhow, this is all very nerdy!

Here's is a picture of the orchestra bells I will use to record this sequence. I found these in a used percussion store in Ottawa many tours ago and I was told they were originally used in a school orchestra. The tone bars on these are very thick and heavy and even though there is a little rust and pitting on the metal, they still sound very beautiful in my opinion.

Anyhow! Just wanted to check in and let you know that things are moving along on the production! More updates soon!

Thank you for your continued support! 

E