El Dodorado

During my last year at ESMA I had to create a 5 minutes long movie with eight other students.

Here you can discover my role in this production as well as our creative journey.

Dodos are birds, but they are not meant to fly. Discover the journey of a colony of dodos who want to force destiny by attempting the impossible : flying !

What did I learn from this project ?

This group project lasted a year, and we had to create a short movie from scratch, starting with a scenario and moving on to VFX and editing.

This exercise taught us to act like professionals like we were a mini studio on our own. We had to be organized and manage our schedule so the production could stay on track. I learned the importance of good communication and feedback. I keep a very good memory of this year working with my teammates.

Softwares : Maya, Houdini, Nuke, Davinci, Photoshop, Procreate

View our teaser

Meet the El Dodorado team !

Dorian Condelis

Scenario, Storyboard, 2D Animatic, Animation, Editing

Talhia Brom

Modeling, Set dress, Lighting, Texturing, Compositing

Solène Corral

Character and props rigging, Animation

Adrien Lhabitant

R&D, Crowd System, FX, Pipeline, Fur System, Lightint, Texturing, Compositing

Ambre Kerbrat

Scenario, Storyboard, Animation

Héloïse Ogez

Groom, R&D, Set Dress, FX, Lighting, Texturing, Compositing

Brice Girardin

Modeling, Set Dress, Lightint, Texturing, Compositing

Ghita Hsaine

Storyboard, Animation, Compositing

Emilie Cayre

Concept Art, Props Rigging, Animation

Pre-production phase

After completing the essence of the scenario, I had to design some characters like the shark and the dodo soul. We chose to go for a cartoon style, so I had to simplify the shapes and exaggerate their facial features.

In addition to the character design, I was also in charge of the main concept art of the island of dodos.

This was a very fun part because I was able to draw inspiration from tropical islands and their vegetation and fruits and adapt them to fit our artistic direction.

Animation testing and Crowd Cycle

To define the animation style that would best match the humor of our film, we had to conduct several exaggerated poses and timing tests. We based our work on cartoon animation inspired by films like Hotel Transylvania, which includes a lot of distortion and extreme poses.

The crowd was one of the major aspects of our short film and a problem we quickly addressed. We were aiming for shots with a crowd of almost a hundred characters, so we had to establish effective methodologies. We, therefore, created animation cycles that were imported into Houdini, multiplied, and then retimed to give the crowd a more realistic look.

Animation

El Dodorado has a total of 106 shots. Since it's a fairly large number, we had to organize ourselves to be efficient.

We divided the shots among ourselves based on their duration and complexity to ensure a balanced distribution.

I also took the position of lead animator of my team. I often checked the quality and, above all, the consistency of the animation to ensure there were no gaps between certain shots. We held frequent meetings to demonstrate our progress and gather feedback on our animations.