Our first case study focuses on a CG short with especially unique character designs and art direction. We’ll let the student director, Morgan Kelly, describe the production process of his individual cinematic vision…

The Beginning
As a student at the California Institute of the Arts, I studied character design, 2D and 3D character animation, story and film theory. The curriculum there stresses the fundamentals of these disciplines while simultaneously encouraging individual style and growth. The character animation program requires all students to complete a short animated film each year. The year-end goal at CalArts is for each student to personally develop and implement each aspect of production on the film, from story to design to animation to final editing. After two years of studying traditional animation, I began my first CG short film, The Terrible Tragedy of Virgil and Maurice, during the spring semester of my third year (see Figure 1). I then returned to it at the end of my fourth year and expanded on the story and animation to complete the four-minute short film in April of 2003.

[Figure 1] Morgan Kelly’s third-and fourth-year film project at CalArts. All images from Inspired 3D Short Film Production by Jeremy Cantor and Pepe Valencia, series edited by Kyle Clark and Michael Ford. Reprinted with permission

Story and Design
The story for The Terrible Tragedy of Virgil and Maurice involves two characters who are physically conjoined but have entirely different personalities. Virgil is a dramatic, vaudevillian performer and Maurice is a vulgar, narcoleptic serpent, who is in place of Virgil’s right arm (although I ultimately switched it to the left). And then there is Houdini III, a small bird beloved by Virgil, who is tragically swallowed by the serpent. The entire short film was created, from early concepts and ideas to the final rendering, compositing and output, in eight months.