Friday, August 8th, 2014 by Margarete Kitel
Do you think that fluffy plush animals and pure action don't fit together? This short animation movie „The Mega Plush II“ will show you the opposite.
The second episode of the action animation short movie, created by Matt Burniston, a 3D & motion graphics freelancer from New York, came out recently. Between client work he is working his passion project, on The Mega Plush.
Matt Burniston comments: „ ...The Mega Plush. A series of short films/webisodes about a group of four plush toy vigilantes, who are struggling against the uprising of the SOC (Society of Chimps) army. Good vs evil. Bear vs sock monkey. And asking the question, "who has the stuffing to survive?" I have completed two of the four episodes, and so far they have been a big hit...“
With this extraordinary movie idea he won two Vimeo staff picks and a nomination for 3D world Magazine's CG Animated Short of the Year. We asked Matt some questions to find out more about the technical creation process and of course of finding the idea for this Plush action.
How did the idea arise for this movie and the passion behind it?
„The Mega Plush story started around 6 years ago, when a friend came to me with some sketches of the characters, a plush bear in a mid-air action shot, holding two big guns. As soon as I saw them I was hooked, and knew it would make an awesome 3D animation."
"Ever since then I have been working on some capacity on the project. I've always dreamed of making a short film and I thought this might be the perfect time to chase that dream. So over the last few years I have been developing back stories for the characters along with the crazy little world they all live in. One of my biggest goals was to try and merge these two quite opposite ideas... Plush toys & violent action movie, I felt like it was something that I hadn't seen before and would be fun, not only for me to make but for people to watch.„
How many frames have you had to render and how long was the render time?
„The second episode of The Mega Plush came out to around 7500 frames, which I'd say about 90% of which was rendered on the Rebus Render Farms.” “I'm not sure on the exact render times, but setting up all the shots and getting them all rendered took about 2 solid weeks, then a few days of tweaks and re-renders after that. Compared to the first episode which i rendered in my home studio, which took around 2-3 months, I saved a lot of time using RebusFarm this time around.“
How long did it take to create The Mega Plush? The Story is elaborately narrated, definitely a lot of work for one person.
„It took me about 6 months to complete the fist episode, working alone. And the second episode around 3 months, with the help of my (now) writing partner Kyle DeBoer. We have a script for the 3rd and 4th episodes, and I am now trying to assemble a small team to help me get them fully realised in a shorter amount of time, but for this we need some funding, which we are currently trying to find."
"We have plenty more stuff in the pipeline though, and encourage everyone to keep their eyes peeled for more coming from The Mega Plush.„
We will for sure keep our eyes open and hope to see more of The Mega Plush action soon!
