Making of breakfast

The main goal of the short film Breakfast was to understand boundaries and test our workflow in a real production pipeline. Understanding the challenges we might face and how best to overcome them. This meant keeping the story simple, while still pushing boundaries on what techniques we could use.

March 2022

The short turned into a slice-of-life story, using the prompt 'make breakfast'. This led to the script being written easily and quickly, with the bulk of the pre-production work was completed in the first month.

The kitchen underwent a couple of design changes before animation began. The original idea was to have a lower living room section join onto the kitchen. This posed a few issues with both our hardware and time constraints.

We settled on having the kitchen look out through a floor-to-ceiling window, allowing the morning light to flood the space.

April 2022

The production stage started strongly. We used a pre-built character to help save time and focus effort where it needed to be. This meant we could start modelling the kitchen and building the prop rigs.

After settling on a colour scheme for the kitchen and finishing the texturing, we began animation. The opening sequence was the most difficult, as we wanted to make that shot perfect. This was the shot that became the thumbnail and poster art for the animation.

May 2022

The sequences two, three, and four were finished this month. There were surprisingly few complications for these sequences, and the final shots landed exactly as intended, giving a nice early morning lazy feel.

The use of volume scattering and depth of field was crucial to achieving this feeling. The volume scattering produced the perfect haze, while the depth of field helped to keep the image soft and the focus exactly where it was needed.

Sequence four, on the other hand, posed many issues. The main one was working with fluid simulations within our pipeline. These issues ate a couple of weeks off our timetable and had to be resolved in some creative and unusual ways. We relied heavily on shape keys to achieve the movement of the fluids.

June

The final sequence was short and sweet, maintaining the mood in line with the soft visuals. In post-production, we aimed to preserve that warm, calm feeling through colour grading and gentle music. We applied the final finishing touches to tie everything together.