tacha writes:
Hey all! We collaborated again with Formando Rutas for a new film about the problems of censorship in funding awarded sustainability content, specifically about the mining industry.
Carrying the humorous approach of the previous video (2D animation made in Grease Pencil), we wanted to explore a 3D medium to tell this story. Representing one of the endangered species of the mining zones in Chile, Ranita del Loa was the perfect character to design. Having a soft and bright style compared to the topic of censorship was a bold mix to convey the message.
We created a minimal setup using Geometry Nodes, where we scattered the different elements using Vertex Groups masks for art direction. We also used GN to generate booleans to "crack" and explode the void.
The rigs were made using Auto Rig Pro which we extended a bit to include the 2D mouth rig. The mouth phonemes were created in Grease Pencil, and attached to the geometry using a mix between bones and a Shrinkwrap modifier. These were rendered in EEVEE in a different pass and included in the final animation in the composition stage.
We also did the color correction and general composition using the Blender Compositor. Then we used After Effects to render the final 2D animation.
