Moonlight Melodies
The end of a project and the beginning of another
Continuing the same thread of the last couple of posts, these pieces are part of a larger animation project I did about 8 or 9 years ago. I thought this was going to be the last post I would make from these old projects, but I was recently cleaning and organizing my old papers, and found so much material, both in sketches as well as written stories, and what could be categorized as essays. Most of the digital work I did back then has unfortunately been lost; I often neglect the regular backups I should be doing, and both my software and hardware become obsolete before I can migrate anything to a newer thing. But I am a bit of a hoarder of papers. I have kept papers older than myself, given by my dad, also a hoarder of papers. I like to think that, were all these papers categorized and kept in bins and scrapbooks, this would be considered more the work of an archivist—and a very conscientious and thorough one. However, that is a story for another post.
These are part of the concept art I did for an animation student for her graduation project. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the names, neither of her nor the project; my involvement was minimal in the end. She wanted the lighting and feel from Disney’s short Feast, so I helped create a color palette and rendered a few scenes with what the final look might be. These two are the ones that have survived. The plot, which I only remember vaguely, was about a porcelain ballerina coming to life during the night, the setting being an abandoned toy maker workshop.
We connected through what back then was the beta of Artella. Artella was (or is, I guess) a cloud-based platform designed for artists and filmmakers to collaborate remotely. Upon its launch, it had some big names attached to some of the projects, and from what I was able to test, it worked very well—even with game projects; it was entirely possible to run the gameplay on the platform and to add notes and changes from different team members. I don’t remember exactly when, but eventually the beta ended, and now I believe it’s only used by big studios. Before closing the beta, the community was quite large, but not overwhelmingly so; it really felt like the ideal place to connect with people and get a project off the ground. That was what I grieved the most when the beta ended—I don’t think I have found anything like it that functions in a similar manner.
While going through these old images, I found that my inspiration was sparked once again for the world I helped create; I wanted to go back and explore it more. So I made a few sketches for characters that would live in this abandoned toy workshop—unfinished toys, mostly those made out of carved wood and only half-painted. I’m not sure how I got here, but the toys are inspired by characters of Commedia dell’arte. I used the two most popular, Harlequin and Pierrot, for the designs and somewhat the personalities, and I also added an angry chicken. Don’t ask me about the angry chicken, because I couldn’t tell you why I wanted to add her to the cast; it just felt right. The tentative name for the project is Moonlight Melodies. I’ll continue to share the development as I go along—stay tuned for more sketches from this dusty corner of my archive.