Welcome To the Weekly Blog Postings!
For our student film, we kept blogs of each student film to keep track of our accomplishments and progress! A really fun way to see how we made the film from the very beginning to the eventual end. Please enjoy the antics of the Creme Brulee team!
2/6/2026
Post #1
"Testing. Testing. Is this thing on?"
The Beginning!
Honestly, we had a VERY great start to this project! Everyone has so much fire to make this film come to life. It was so cool to see that each member actually WANTED to be apart of this journey! It has just been so fun so far. <3
As for what we are doing ATM, we needed to discuss the overall "look" of the film. We were somewhat struggling to finalize a visual direction for our film to go end (which is my fault, as I had very specific ideas for the final images, but strugguled to provide references because it was so niche). But, I feel as if we narrowed it down pretty well after a while, and actually have a neat style idea for the film!
We did this by splitting the team into two (Post and Pre-Production), so one part can work on the final rendered-look (Unreal, Shader types, etc.) and the other works on the concept art for the assets, animatic/storyboards, etc. I have mainly been on the pre-team! I have the current job of finalizing Rooster's character sheet/turnaround and drawing the storyboard. I am also in charge of approving art direction from both teams. You can kind of see in the photo all of us watching Eli's Unreal Shader demo - which was SO COOL.
2/13/26
Post #2
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OMG Life Is Chaotic
The time in between this post and the last post - OH MAN. There was a lot going on in my personal life that completely derailed me, a bit, unfortunetly (my mom having a knarly surgery being the biggest). Thankfully, the team has been very understanding and generating very great work so far, to make up for my lost time. I have attempted to still produce work alongside everyone, so we don't fall completely behind solely due to me. It's been a hard journey, but we're getting through it!
So far, I have finished the story board for the story beats for the most part (these would be the most emotionally important scenes of the short - I selected a few to share below!), and am currently working on getting through creating thumbnails for the acting beats! Rooster's character sheet is also nearly finished, as it just need some lineart. But it ready to use for modeling the basic mesh and (basic bones) sculpt - which teammate Eli is going to work on! We are also having workshops within the pre-team to further solidify out art direction. I think we have the main style down pretty much, we just have to work on a more in depth color script.
2/20/26
Post #3
Movin' Right Along! 𓆏𖠊
Progress!
Wow! We have done a LOT of work! The Post & Pre Teams somewhat mixed together and we've all been working on more of the story-process. We got so much concept art (both doodles and full-drawings) made for assets, I did a thumbnail-microboard that was the basis for our main, fleshed-out storyboard/animatic, and we FINALLY got our style firgured out. We somewhat invented it, but we're going with the loose title: Grunge-pop Hyper Flapjack Marker. It's a very anime title, but it works haha!
Right now, we still need a bunch of assets to fill our world. But, the good news is we've got our story and all the important assets nailed down pretty good! It's been very entertaining to see how much it's come to life!
There's still some significant details we need to figure out, like Rooster's smokey hair, but I believe we are on a super good track. We will have the animatic done in a few days (a week before it's technically due) so we are SUPER good! Look to the right for the thumbnails and then down for a sneak peak of the storyboard!
3/6/26
POST #4
WE SEE THE VISION!!!
Animatic Time!
After many, MANY drawings, we got the first version of our animatic completed! It's not quite ready to release just yet (plus, I don't want to spoil anything concrete on here!), but it's so cool to see the story actually come to life! I've included one of our favorite panels I drew to the left!
We have some issues we are attempting to resolve with the story, which has been the entire group's main priority so far. Our next step is to lay out our storyboards (which later got converted into the rough animatic) and work on the scenes that are falling a little flat. The main piece we need to solve is our conflict! I believe we are all sharing some fantastic ideas on how to remedy this, though, and will find a solid plan shortly. By our next Production Pass (a presentation to the entire class to show progress) comes around, we will have a tighter grip on our animatic and beats!
3/13/26
Post #5
WORKSHOP WORKSHOP WORKSHOP!
Rooster's Alive!
This week has been really exciting so far! We're finally approaching the modeling stage!
We, of course, have still been hard at work with out animatic. We are getting deeper into the nitty gritty. We did a very fun excersice of getting the physical papers for the story/animatic, and all did a few days of workshopping each scene. Specifically, we worked on really fine-tuning the conflict between the characters Puffin and Rooster.
We also made a unanamous decision of cute-ifying Rooster's design. Originally, we had wanted Rooster to be off putting, and wasn't until the audience got to know him that his cuter side would be revealed. However, as our story leaned heavily into a cartoony realm, we agreed it was time that Rooster got a very cutesy upgrade! Still a scary monster, but now a giant, goofy guy!
3/22/26
POST #6
Brain hurts. Spring Break
WORK WORK WORK WORK
IT HAS BEEN A WEEK! But not for the project (the project's actually been very fun and going very well!). I am just very tired cause my jobs!
It's the week before Spring Break, and I feel like all of us are going into the break with a fairly solid plan of who's doing what. I have mostly conceptial plans, making background charcater designs and photobatching decorations throughout the town! My plan is to eventually have a layout of the exterior of the bakery blocked out in Maya & ready to detail before the next production pass. I also got access to Marvolous Designer, and plan to mess around with Puffin's clothing! Not sure how that will turn out (we have multiple people working on it just in case!), but it's gonna be a fun experiment!
*We also plan to have designs made for T-shirts & an Instagram account! Not priority, at the moment, but a fun idea!
4/10/26
POST #7
Oh my gosh it's midterm time?
Into the Thick of It!
It's modeling time! There's not much to report at this time, but that we're officially ALL starting in Maya and getting our assets settled! We divided a bunch of our decorations and hero items, with me specifically working on background charcaters (with our small British child being my current priority, as he has a rather important scene - I have added an image of a quick non-proportional draft of what he'd look like).
Our production pass went really great, too! Everyone loved the story so far, and because we only had notes for mild staging tweaks, we will be ready to move onto the 3D animatic!