Homework is a 3D animated short film directed, produced and written by Nacho Arjona. Get the original products of the short film!
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Hi Everyone!
First and foremost, I wanted to thank everyone for the incredible support and pattience you've displayed during the production of the short film. Thankfully, we're in the position to announce the short is complete and the surveys are ready to be sent!
While the surveys and short-film are ready to be launched, I think it's only fair to give the opportunity to step down from the project if someone feels like it, which I'd completely understand. There won't be any more delays though, as Tuesday's post is already scheduled!
You'll receive:
- Your survey
- A link to the short film + password.
In some cases (people who got limited edition prints from the short, etc), you'll need to watch the film before filling your survey in order to decide the shot you want.
A few months ago, still with a very incomplete version of Homework, we submitted it for consideration to participate at Malaga film festival. It's a pretty important festival in Spain, and also happens to be the city where the studio is based, so it was special for us. It's a very competitive festival, and the version we sent had unfinished music and sound (and even some shots), so we didn't expect much. But fortunately, they liked it enough to be part of the official selection!
Because of this nomination we found ourselves in a tricky situation. By their rules, I couldn't announce the nomination nor make the short available before their announcement (a week ago).
We planned on releasing the surveys + short film last month, but since we couldn't make the short available, and some surveys are dependant on you watching the short film first, it created a bottleneck where we couldn't really do much but wait.
During the whole production of Homework, I've seen myself in situations where I had to choose between delivering faster or make it better. I've always chosen the former, which has been frustrating sometimes, expensive many times, but in the end allowed us to create something much bigger.
Since the short-film was completed (excepting the sound) a couple months ago, we used this extra time to re-render it at much higher resolution than the originally planned.
In order to shorten the after-survey waiting time, we produced most of the rewards in advance, with some extras in case you want to include some addons. This is not the most cost-efficient approach, but saving time is important after all this wait!
If you don't know Joseba, he's a multi-awarded music composer, and we were very lucky to have him to help bringing life to those characters. He created a very unique and creative soundtrack, I can't wait for you to listen to it. In the meantime, make sure to check his work!
I am aware that time could be a big factor in the support you’ve given to me, so please feel free to contact me at [email protected] before March 5, and we'll be happy to help you with the withdrawal of your pledge, in case you prefer to have it.
I absolutely understand if that's your case. But if you're still happy with what we're doing, I can't thank you enough for that and I promise you won't regret it. I think that while you signed up for something different, we're creating something much bigger so hopefully, we make the wait worth it.
Hey everyone!
This one will be a shorter update than my usual ones, we're nearing the completion of the project!
First, regarding the production of the short, as you know, the music is the only part we're still working on. Without unveiling too much, I'm super happy about how the soundtrack is turning out, we're just going maybe a bit slower than I expected at this date.
The important part of this update, rewards sneak peeks! They're small clips but I thought you'd like to see them :) Also, an excerpt of the final storyboard we used (which I think that I never shared here) which will also be present in physical format in some of the rewards. I hope you like them!
Pins previews
Storyboards excerpts
In addition to that, we're already working with our printers in order to produce the art prints that will be signed, and regarding those who contain that reward, there would be some nice surprises :D
Discord link was broken in the last update. You can join using this link:
I am aware that time could be a big factor in the support you’ve given to me, so please feel free to contact me at [email protected] and we'll be happy to help you with the withdrawal of your pledge, in case you prefer to have it.
I absolutely understand if that's your case. But if you're still happy with what we're doing, I can't thank you enough for that and I promise you won't regret it. I think that while you signed up for something different, we're creating something much bigger so hopefully, we make the wait worth it.
Hey Everyone!
First of all, a quick recap on the status:
Now the longer version for those who want to get into details!
One problem we've faced with this project is that it started as a solo project, while we're now an animation studio driven by my vision still, but full of amazingly talented people that is helping to make sure the short is the best it can be.
As you, we've been doing a lot of work with brands to help fund the short and elevate the production value, that made us take longer, but at the same time, it made us improve A LOT. We got to a point where the short was almost finished (back in October last year), but for us it was clear that we could do much better now. And because of that, we made the decision to make sure we could do our best, to rework the look of the whole short.
Today I can happily say that the whole short is complete! But it wasn't easy, in order to achieve this we had to:
For many, I'm sure that it may look like a silly decision to do all that with the production so close to being completed, and some even may prefer the old look, but the decision behind that was to get the best out of us, to make the cinematic short film I wanted to create, and to deliver something really unique.
Here you can find a side by side between the state of the short back in October vs Now.
With the whole short ready, it's time to start production! There are some products like pins that usually take longer to produce, that are already in production. I expect to send everyone their survey in September. Since we expect everything to be produced by then, and the short will be ready, shipments will happen right away after the survey.
With the short being ready (barring the sound), completion will be determined by the production of rewards we're using this extra production time to create some short mini animations that will be included as extras with the short film. The production of the short has been a wild ride, so we also expect to be able to include some really interesting stuff regarding the production.
While we can't really share publicly a lot of the content we create in the studio, I do share a lot of that on discord. Also, I'm there all the time as I communicate with the team on Discord, so you can ask me any questions you may have or chat with me :)
JOIN NAOLITO COMMUNITY ON DISCORD
I am aware that time could be a big factor in the support you’ve given to me, so please feel free to contact me at [email protected] and we'll be happy to help you with the withdrawal of your pledge, in case you prefer to have it.
I absolutely understand if that's your case. But if you're still happy with what we're doing, I can't thank you enough for that and I promise you won't regret it. I think that while you signed up for something different, we're creating something much bigger so hopefully, we make the wait worth it.
Thank you!
Hey Everyone! First of all, I'm happy to share the final trailer for Homework!
Regarding production, things are going really well but not as fast as I expected as usual. This is the stage we're at:
Sound
In a short like this one, music is almost as important as the visual aspect of it. We've been working on the music for a few months now, with some really nice results. However, after working on Homework for almost 2 years, I really want to avoid rushing the production of the music. As the project has grown, so did my expectations about what we're creating.
Initially, my plan was to compose it myself, remember? Now I'm working along with an amazing composer to make sure we create something truly special and that elevates all the visual work we've done. I think we're succeeding at it.
Render
Homework didn't just grow in terms of production values, it also did in length, which was the main reasoning behind splitting Homework into episodes. Right now, Homework is sitting around 19 minutes (This will most likely change a bit after the final pass of editing). 19 minutes of animation means that you have 27360 frames to render at movie quality (the trailer was rendered at low quality just to get it done faster). Rendering that is not easy, nor cheap.
Rendering in a render farm is the easiest approach, but rendering so many frames and different shots (+200 unique shots) is a logistical nightmare, you need to upload and download terabytes of data, also not accounting for the cost, which just taking render costs into consideration would be higher to what we got at funding Homework here.
Because of that, I'm building a render farm for Naolito studio. By rendering it in-house, we take the costs out of the decision making, so we'll be able to render Homework at the best quality, but also future projects.
While we're finishing production, we're already moving to make sure that we put Homework in the spotlight once it's finished. 3 weeks ago I was honored with the chance to talk at Blender conference about my journey from solo artist to studio thanks to Homework. I want to sincerely thank every single one of you for backing Homework because you made that possible.
Giving this talk was scary as hell though! I was not only giving a talk in front of people from the CG industry, but I was giving it in English! As scary as it was, it was a great experience, and I better get used to it as I was invited to give other talks since then. I'm picking them carefully as I want to focus on production as much as possible.
Here's the talk!
While we can't really share publicly a lot of the content we create in the studio, I do share a lot of that on discord. Also, I'm there all the time as I communicate with the team on Discord, so you can ask me any questions you may have or chat with me :)
JOIN NAOLITO COMMUNITY ON DISCORD
I am aware that time could be a big factor in the support you’ve given to me, so please feel free to contact me at [email protected] and we'll be happy to help you with the withdrawal of your pledge, in case you prefer to have it.
I absolutely understand if that's your case. But if you're still happy with what we're doing, I can't thank you enough for that and I promise you won't regret it. I think that while you signed up for something different, we're creating something much bigger so hopefully, we make the wait worth it.