Work in progress
Everything built on Sunny Spade so far, in one place. Hair dynamics, the Fugitive :30 loop test and the music box AI shots.
Spade's pigtails currently hold rigid to the head. These add secondary motion with a custom spring solver that bakes straight onto the rig, so the result renders on any machine with no simulation cache to hand around. Two things had to be solved together: the tails have to stay seated in the chrome cuffs, and the hair above the cuffs still has to move.
The hair mesh went from 10,800 to 57,700 vertices so it can actually draw the curve the rig asks for. Joints swing freely, and where they are held back they are eased rather than stopped, so nothing pops.
Same subdivided mesh, no cap at all. Loosest motion of the set, at the cost of a sharper bend low in the tail on the hardest bounces.
Rather than deforming the existing hair, this grows roughly 1,100 new locks, each with its own wave, spiral and taper. The original pigtails are hidden underneath.
Subdivided mesh, but the bend cap was a hard stop and the middle of the tail snapped against it.
Tails held in the cuffs by limiting angle instead of freezing them, so the hair on top stays alive.
Too few, too thick. Read as flat blades.
Calmed the overshoot, but took the life out with it.
20 joints per tail with a smooth weight falloff. Removed the creasing.
First attempt at holding the tails in place. Held them, but froze the hair above the cuffs.
A self-directed thirty second test of the whole loop: script, hand-drawn boards, AI stills, animation. Built to measure how much control the AI stage actually gives before the October benchmark. Seven shots, fifteen panels, deliberately narrow camera language. Her face is withheld for twenty-seven of the thirty seconds.
Animatic. Boards cut to the track. Timing runs 5 / 4 / 4 / 4 / 3 / 6 / 4 seconds and lands on the drop at the final orbit cut. Sound on.
One still per shot beat, not one per panel. Four panels get carried by the video model from a neighbour instead. Every frame was generated from the board panel plus the locked character anchor, so composition comes from the drawing and the character comes from the reference.
The first pipeline test against the creative brief for the music box opening. Ivory and gold box opens on a slow push, ending near full frame on the faceted mirror. Same prompt and reference pack run across different video models to compare control and consistency.
Ten seconds, full push through to the mirror.
Same brief, different model.
Same brief, different model.
Written pieces that go with the work above.
Fifteen panels, seven shots, with camera notes and timings.
Contact sheet of the eleven generated first frames.
Seven step plan for the proof shot, with tools, hours, scorecard and fallbacks.
The 3D-controlled, human-directed pipeline as presented to the team in July.
Stage by stage, from 3D blockout to finished styleframe.