So we create a camera, give it the calibration tag and start adding lines and grids as needed until the attribute manager says we have a solid “Solve”.

And now comes the fun part! I use a plane object first. And because I placed a pin in the corner of the steps, Cinema 4D inserts this plane right here. Then I press “C” to turn the parametric plane into a polygon object and activate the Edge mode to start working.

To get started properly, we just need to move the two left edges into the right position to hit the edges. Simply select the edges and drag them to fit – or use the coordinate manager here, as the red and blue axes sit directly on the world zero point – set the Z and X axes to zero and they will snap to the correct position. And that’s exactly why we set the pin so precisely in the previous workshop.

(1) Now we can pull the right edge over to finish off the top of the step. (2) Then we can also select the long front edge and, holding down the Ctrl key, drag the Y-axis down to create the polygon for the front of the step.

The problem now is that the geometry is covering the background image. This is where the camera projection mapping is perfect to let us see both. Go to the Attribute Manager, select the calibration tag on the camera and click on the “Create Camera Mapping” button under the tab. This will create a new material tag that is set up to map a camera projection of that image to the geometry. Simply drag the new tag onto the stage we have created. Now we can see the image above the polygons.

Step by step ..

Now we can continue with the modelling of the steps – and this only takes a few steps on the staircase. To start trimming – and to create an edge at the correct length of the step – we drag the axis we created earlier onto the step while holding down the Ctrl key. This is how Cinema 4D creates a copy. We follow the shape of the steps up to the top edge.

To make it easier for us, we deactivate the camera so we can actually see the results of the camera mapping. However, it is very important not to move the calibrated camera.

Disabling the camera makes it much easier to see what you’re doing. It means that I can zoom into an area, and because of the way the camera projection works, I can (1) move the geometry and the projected image doesn’t move – and that makes it really easy to align edges with the image. (2) It also makes it easy to see any mistakes made during modelling with the camera active. Because we want to move the camera away from its calibrated position, we need to model the background so that we get some parallax to maintain a bit of realism. This can be achieved fairly easily by using a layer positioned at the base of the first step to represent the ground, stretching an edge (then re-activating the camera) until the flat ground meets a point in the image, and then dragging the Ctrl key up and out of the shot. It looks quite strange when the camera is not active – we can only see it properly when the camera is active.

Once you’re done, it should look something like this …

This brings us back to the cover picture with the ducks. We now not only have shadow-catching geometry, but also geometric objects to hide other objects – like in a photo.

Auto-Animate!

But there’s another cool trick we can use our scene for. We can animate the camera – and let the camera morph tag do all the work. Here’s how: In the Object Manager, create one (1) copy of the camera you used for the calibration and delete the calibration tag. Make a (2) copy of this new camera and group under a zero point. Then right-click on the first camera copy and select the (3) camera morph tag from the motion camera tag menu.

Make a copy of the camera, group it under a zero, activate it and navigate into the image. Rotate and move it a little, but be sure to stay within the image.

The object manager should look like this.

Select the Camera Morph tag, then change the source mode from “Simple Morph” to “Multi Morph” in the Attribute Manager (under the “Tag” tab). We then drag one camera after the other from the grouped zero tag into the list field. Make sure that the same order applies as in the zero point, as this is the order of the animation.

Now, to actually see the animation, set the project frame length to about 200 frames. Very important: make sure that the frame scrubber is on frame 001. Now we click on the small circle next to “Blend” in the Camera Morphs Attribute Manager (while making sure that Blend is set to 0%, of course) to create a keyframe. Now move the frame scrubber to the last frame, move the blend to 100% and create another keyframe.

All that’s left to do is sit back, enjoy what a great VFX guru we are and apply for jobs in Hollywood.

How director Melanie Lopez came up with the idea for “The Stained Club” requires some explanation, as photographs of murder houses provided her with the inspiration: for the “Evidence” project, Angela Strassheim photographed the interiors of American houses where murders had taken place, the blood traces of which were made visible using the chemical compound luminol and UV light. When she saw these photos, Melanie wondered what it would be like if emotional pain left the same indelible marks on people that could not be removed? This was the starting signal for the animated film about Finn and his friends at the beginning of Melanie’s studies in 2014.

However, it was to take a while before the story was ready – the plot was only finalised shortly before Melanie’s final fifth year of study. “I developed the first draft within three months together with my teachers and the team. The story was set in a school at the time and was very basic. Our lecturers were happy with it, but I wasn’t. Fortunately, the summer holidays came and I was able to take some time out from the project. I watched a lot of films during that time to understand what influenced and shaped me as a child. And tada! The knot burst and at the beginning of my final year of study, with Simon Boucly’s help, I changed the entire animatic as well as the set, which became a junkyard,” Melanie recalls.

Finding an end

With the scrapyard as the central location, Melanie found it easier to develop the experiences of the gang of children. In addition, the film “Swiss Army Man”, which was released at the time, motivated Melanie to completely redesign the story, even if it was risky at this point in the production: “‘Swiss Army Man’ seems very far removed from our film at first glance, but it helped the process incredibly. I would have regretted it if I had decided against the changes.” Finding the ending of the film was particularly difficult for Melanie. “I didn’t want to have a specific happy or sad ending to the story, but one that said: this is life – sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s happy, but if you keep those close to you close, it definitely gets easier.” As this is not an easy way to end a film, it was a difficult decision for Melanie.

But ultimately, it felt right for the artist to end with Finn’s thoughts and the fact that he feels somewhat alone with the way he lives. But that despite everything, his friends love him and are there for him. “When Robbie throws him the ball, it means he’s forgiven him and they can just move on as if nothing has happened,” Melanie explains. “It’s not really an ending to the storyline, but summarises how Finn has moved on after meeting his friends.”

The storytelling also presented the other team members with major challenges. “We had to make a lot of decisions in order to tell the story in the right way so that it matched Melanie’s intentions. We often put our personal opinions on the back burner, but in the end it turned out to be worth it!” Simon Boucly is certain.

Films as a source of inspiration

One of the most important references for “The Stained Club” were films that show a group of children fighting against something, such as the 80s film “It” by Tommy Lee Wallace or classics like “The Goonies” or “E.T.”. In terms of mood, camera work and lighting, the team orientated themselves on “The Tree of Life” by Terrence Malick and films by Xavier Dolan. Claude Barras’ “My Life as a Courgette” served as a model in terms of the emotional appeal and the portrayal of the protagonists’ childlike innocence. “The film also helped us to understand how we could guide the child actors for the voice recordings,” says Melanie.

Shaping children’s personalities

Right from the start, the director was certain that the children’s characters should have big black eyes. However, Melanie felt that the first draft was too cartoonish. For this reason, the team also tested normal eyes at a certain point during the design process, but the black eyes factor remained important and was implemented in the final film. For the children’s personalities, the team created individual documents in which they recorded preferences, background stories and more. “Even if they don’t appear in the film, it helped with animation and look decisions to make everything coherent and believable,” says Melanie. The students created the children’s characteristics in such a way that each one contributes to the group with their personal strengths and uniqueness. Finn had to be able to admire them for this and want to be a part of it. “The children’s characters include parts of myself as a child as well as characteristics of other people that I admired as a child,” adds Melanie. “Also, the group is mostly boys because they don’t usually show emotional pain and deal with it in a different way than girls. I wanted to show in the film that it’s okay for boys to deal with their feelings too.”

The team shot reference videos with the actor Robert Bennet, which helped a lot with the animation process because he gave the team a lot of ideas with his acting. Simon’s favourite part of the animation work was shaping the children’s personalities through their behaviour in their games, while keeping in mind what they had already been through.

This hardship in the children’s lives is particularly evident in one scene in the film, which Alice Jaunet particularly appreciates due to its subtle narrative style: “The way Finn’s mother rejects him is the emotional highlight of the film for me. No matter how many times I watch the film, it feels like a punch in the gut every time. Beatrice did a great job with the FX on this one.”

Explain how much?

The team realised the Previs animatic in Maya. They initially edited with Premiere because the software was more efficient to work with during the test phase. However, as the process progressed, the team switched to Avid Media Composer, which the students also used for the final editing. During the previs phase, which lasted six months, 30 versions of the film were created. “In order to achieve the emotions we wanted, it took a lot of test runs and discussions,” recalls Simon. “It caused us a lot of problems until we knew how much we had to explain so that the emotions of the film could be felt by the audience. We realised that the more we explained, the less empathy there was for the characters. A concrete example of this is Finn’s magic marks. Although they repeatedly have a meaning throughout the story, the film never explains exactly what they actually are. The audience has to find their own explanation. This involves them in the plot.” For Melanie, this openness of interpretation is an important factor in the finished film: “Some people see the stains as a general means of talking about otherness. One grandmother told me after the film that they represent handicaps in general for her. That really touched me, because it showed me that the film can be interpreted according to a person’s personal situation and that we had chosen the right path.”

Too long arms and other design challenges

Based on the 2D designs of the characters that Melanie created, the students modelled the 3D characters in Maya. Melanie checked that the look was going in the right direction from an artistic point of view, while Simon checked that the design would work in animation.

Between design and rigging, the process went back and forth a lot until they were sure that the characters with the big head were animatable. “Translating the 2D design into 3D was complicated, and Finn in particular was a challenge. In the animatic, we already recognised the problem with his design: his arms were far too short. We had to make numerous adjustments until his proportions were right for the animation, the story and the VFX,” explains Simon. The characters’ movements had to remain subtle, so it wasn’t so easy to convey the emotions through the animation. “Every detail counted,” says animation artist Chan Stephie Peang. “In particular, animating Robbie in the trolley scene feeling like a superhero with his cape blowing in the wind was a lot of fun.”

The characters’ hair was created in ZBrush, with Alice doing the sculpting and Marie Ciesielski retopologising to light the meshes afterwards. “We decided not to simulate the hair, but to create it with stylised sculpted plates instead,” says Alice. “They had to match the overall style of the film, but at the same time not be too complicated to animate. Marie luckily helped me with the last bit of the challenging task.”

The team put a lot of work into the skin of the child protagonists in particular. Melanie explains why: “It should feel like you could touch them for the audience.” The students realised them with the Substance Painter, which they had recently got to know. Substance Painter was the most useful and practical software for realistic texturing in combination with digital painting. The artists needed this feature to place the children’s drawings on the 3D objects.

Goal: High contrast and not perfect

The background needed to contrast with the cartoonish look of the characters, which is why the team chose a realistic approach. For the stylised look, the students looked at stop-motion references such as those from “ParaNorman”. “The contrast between the cute faces and the harsh environment is meant to symbolise how harsh the world can sometimes be to children,” says Melanie. As much of the action takes place outdoors, numerous sky sets with different times of day and lighting moods had to be created. The team sourced high-res images from the Unsplash website. The students modified these in Photoshop by removing trees and other objects and then integrated them into cards in Nuke.

Realistic scheduling

As the bar was set high for the project, good time management was crucial: a teacher helped to plan the tasks and shots at the beginning. The team used Google Sheets to organise the project, in which all team members updated the status of each task. Beatrice took over the time planning part: “After the 3D animatic was finished, I estimated how long it would take to create all the assets and how much time the individual work steps such as animation, lighting or compositing would take for each individual shot.” With the help of a Gantt chart, the student then produced an estimate of the working days per person that was as accurate as possible. “I made a monthly daily business plan for the team, so I was able to make a realistic estimate of the workload for the rest of the year using real working hours for the tasks.”

In a perfect project world

If Melanie could make the film again, in an ideal project world without time pressure, she would give the actors more time for the live references so that they could create the scenes more freely and not have to act out the script so strictly. “But we didn’t have enough actors or enough time for that,” regrets Melanie. “I would also find every conceivable trick in 3D so that the characters could stay close to the 2D design. We had to change a lot of the design so that the rigs worked and the clothes weren’t too much of a burden during production. I would have liked to have had more time to realise everything as planned and not have it taken away by the technology. But that would only have been possible in a perfect world. We did everything we could for ‘The Stained Club’ within the time frame, which I’m very proud of.”