A Kite's Tale (WDAS Short)

[Clindor]

The second VR short after last year "Cycles", "A Kite’s Tale", will make its world debut at SIGGRAPH 2019. This experimental short film, directed by Bruce Wright, combines hand-drawn animation and the latest VR technology to tell "a whimsical tale of two kites".

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/ ... %80%99s-VR

[D82]

I'm glad to hear this short will feature hand-drawn animation. The director also has another image from the short as his Twitter profile photo.

[Disney's Divinity]

I'll look forward to seeing how this turns out.

[D82]

More info from Bruce Wright, the short's director.

Crew hat for “A Kite's Tale”. Everyone on the crew got one.

Source: https://twitter.com/heybrucewright/stat ... 8129163265

Puppy-kite for “A Kite's Tale” was animated in pencil and paper. I was enormously proud when we were finished to turn the stacks of drawings over to the ARL for preservation forever!

Source: https://twitter.com/heybrucewright/stat ... 4444016640

"A Kite's Tale" is a 3-minute animated short film for Virtual Reality that uses hand-drawn and CG animation to tell a heartwarming story about two kites who get tangled up together and find that friendship makes your heart soar.

Source: https://twitter.com/heybrucewright/stat ... 0369961990

[Sotiris]

Our second VR short, "A Kite’s Tale," will make its world debut at SIGGRAPH 2019! This experimental short film, directed by Bruce Wright, combines hand-drawn animation and the latest VR technology to tell a whimsical tale of two kites.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/DisneyAnimatio ... 885876855/

At SIGGRAPH 2019 yesterday, director Bruce Wright and lighting artist Angela McBride shared more about the making of our second VR short, "A Kite’s Tale." Here's a look at concept art from the short by visual development artist Meg Park.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/DisneyAnimatio ... 348921855/

The puppy kite in our VR short, "A Kite’s Tale," combines hand-drawn with CG animation to form one character. In cleanup animation, additional construction lines were also added to simulate the Xerography era of hand-drawn animation. Animation by Tony DeRosa, Rachel Bibb.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/DisneyAnimatio ... 581502779/

This clip from our second VR short, "A Kite’s Tale," shows the layering of the sky, clouds, edge breakup, atmosphere, and final lighting treatment for the first environment.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/DisneyAnimatio ... 351154045/

[D82]

^Thanks for sharing! It's nice to see some 2D animation from the studio again.

[Sotiris]

More info on the short.

Directed by Bruce Wright, Effects Animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios, a kite’s tale follows a rambunctious puppy kite who becomes “tangled up” in the affairs of a stuffy old dragon kite. When we first meet our cast of characters, the dragon kite is far too busy being majestic to fool around with the energetic young kite. Of course, this being Disney film, one thing eventually leads to another—and what do you know–the two kites end up becoming best buds despite their obvious differences. It’s a classic Disney trope that, while predictable, lends itself well to the art style and pacing of the short film.

Wright and his team were almost surgical in their pairing of hand-drawn animation with CG technology, and it’s safe to say the results speak for themselves. The younger kite, for instance, features a hand-drawn puppy that endlessly bounces around the confines of the kite; meanwhile, the veteran dragon kite—animated entirely in CG– moves effortlessly with the wind in grand fluid motions. Every facet of the kites’ designs plays a factor throughout the animation, such as the tail of the puppy kite, which wags energetically when the young pooch becomes excited.

Similar to Cycles, a kite’s tale also lacks any spoken dialogue, choosing instead to focus on physical humor in a style closer to that of Tom & Jerry; an intentional decision according to the director.

“I think there’s something very child-like about an animated short if it doesn’t use dialogue, because I think it speaks to the whole world,” said Wright during an interview with VRScout. “I feel like VR is a natural storytelling medium, but because it’s new people think of it as being very technological, and so I kind of wanted to strip away that feeling of technology and go right to something that hopefully you feel nostalgic for.”

Source: https://vrscout.com/news/disneys-a-kite ... -premiere/

[Sotiris]

Poster.


Source: https://twitter.com/JustJeanine/status/ ... 1150745600


Concept art.


Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/B4XaZYdDaRs/


Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/B4VROa5jBv3/


Source: https://twitter.com/heybrucewright/stat ... 6764498945

[Jules]

I really want to watch Cycles and A Kite’s Tale, but don’t know if we will have the opportunity. I wonder if WDAS created regular, flat versions of these VR shorts the way Google did with their Spotlight Stories.

[Sotiris]

Videos

• Disney's Bruce Wright Explains 'A Kite’s Tail' Animated VR Short At SIGGRAPH
• Conversations at SIGGRAPH 2019: Bruce Wright

[D82]

I really want to watch Cycles and A Kite’s Tale, but don’t know if we will have the opportunity. I wonder if WDAS created regular, flat versions of these VR shorts the way Google did with their Spotlight Stories.

I hope so, I really want to watch them too. They announced the shorts from the Short Circuit program will be available on Disney Plus and these shorts are part of that program, but I don't know if they will be included.

[Sotiris]

Further details about how the short was put together.

Bruce Wright presents his directorial debut for the VR short A Kite's Tale at Disney Animation. The story of a dragon kite and puppy kite working on friendship. Puppy character begins as a hand drawn animation texture that had to perform logically with the kite body as one character. Rough 3D animation was stabilized and used as a guide to the 2D hand drawn animation and modified timing and silhouette for a more dynamic character. The modified animation was exported to Unity as an alembic sequence. Hand-drawn animation was cleaned up, given a rough edge to look like a construction paper drawing, and composited as a complete texture in Nuke.

The cloudscape was sculpted in Oculus 3D to get dimension and massing. It was import to build in VR. The final cloud look was built in Houdini. The cloud tool starts with sculpted cloud shapes, which controlled different volumetric primitive designs. The openVDB volume is then generally rendered in Disney’s Hyperion renderer. The cloud lighting design was first rendered in Hyperion renderer. These renders were projected onto geometry generated from the Houdini cloud simulations. Geometry was decimated and texture-projected from multiple cameras. No real-time lighting on the clouds, but some lighting modifications used as an overlay. Edge feathering used in distant clouds, but close clouds required a multiple-layered card technique with textured alpha map to break up edges.

Source: https://twitter.com/agraphafx/status/11 ... 3001422848