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Sisyphus at Cinnabon
A few years ago, I created this comic using Blender:

Even though there is no real story, I really liked how the situation made it seem like there was. Just from one comic, there's a theme of resilience and hard work.
I kept the idea in the back of my head until now. Here's my story:
The movie begins with a fat women mounting a bike. We see the bike straining under her weight as she starts pedaling up the mountain. Panning up through the clouds, we see her goal: perched on the highest peak of the mountain is a Cinnabon shop. By the time the women bikes all the way up, she's thin.
The woman sets her bike down and walks inside with the chime of the bell. With another chime of the bell, she walks out, fat as ever. She trips over her bike, and both her and her bike bounce and tumble down the mountain. At the very bottom, she remounts her bike. The first scene is identical to the last scene.
I like the simplicity of my story because I'm coming of an animation project I spent two years making. This will help me create a pre-production animatic for this film, something I've never done before. I like the circular nature of my story because it calls to mind the Myth of Sisyphus, which is analogous to the story both literally (with repeated trips up a mountain) and figuratively (with the difficulty of real weight loss).
From a design perspective, the most important set is the Cinnabon shop on top of the mountain. It has to be appealing as a goal in and of itself. The overall impression should one of a temple or other religious structure on top of a mointinan.
I looked at European coffee shops and identified some key elements:



Then I (rather reluctantly) sketched out the coffee shop on paper:


And then I finally started building in Blender:

I used Freestyle in Blender to make a more cartoony look. Eventually, I decided not to use lines because they were causing problems along the edges.



Finally, I made a version I’m happy with. I used the texture deform modifier on the rock without using a texture for the color. I used volumec clouds and illuminated them on a separate layer than the rest of the set. I used normal maps for the concrete and brick textures.




Friday, October 26, 2012 at 9:59PM 

















