the christmas spectacular

Many moons ago, I attempted to animate a cartoon, by hand, frame by frame, using Flash. That may sound like a lot of fun, but you can understand now why there isn’t a finished project. Truth told, for my money, it simply wasn’t going to be good enough.

An artist has one idea and must make the most of it when possible. I certainly did not want to tell this story multiple times in multiple formats, for heaven sakes! Of course, in 2006 while toiling over the frame-by-frames of an elf putting a coin in a vending machine, I did not know I would be so deeply involved (and in love) with cg animation.

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I altered the original storyline, quite a bit actually, keeping the action and characters central to this wonderful toyland at the north pole and giving Santa more involvement in how things develop.

Blender software is my tool of choice and I am modeling these characters from top to toe, including clothing and accessories. In all, I am going to need about 13 talking characters and then a gaggle of background characters (which I didn’t think about until I saw “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” last night).

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The great thing about setting your scene in a small room is you have space available for about 2 normal sized characters and maybe a bird. When you move the action outdoors or into a large tavern at the heart of Santa’s workshop, which is what I have so foolishly decided to do, seems like any time there is a commotion, elves will come running to see what’s up!

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These renders are works-in-progress. The elf finally got his hat and suit designed. Santa has a texture applied to his suit and I’m working on snow and landscape.

This is a render of a snow-scape with some track in the middle. There is a panoramic sky dome surrounding it.

And finally, practicing some snowmen.

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Stay tuned, as the excitement is just beginning to grow!