OVERGROWN - Production Log #3

Piece by piece, Blender Studio artists are bringing the OVERGROWN teaser to life. Here's what the team accomplished last week.

Now We Hear Them Speak

Hedgehog daughter and Raccoon dad can now talk, as we've wrapped up auditions and recorded final lines with our voice cast. We were lucky enough to find Hedgehog's voice in the charming performance of a little girl, but figuring out who could embody the father figure was trickier. In the end, we found the warmth and care we were looking for in Colin McPhee's take on the role. This casting choice does make Raccoon dad feel slightly younger than the co-directors originally envisioned, but we love how the story is coming together as a result.

Snack Time

Hjalti and Rik are busy animating the shots. It's hard to show progress without spoiling the whole thing, but it's even harder to resist sharing this adorable Hedgehog snack-time sequence! Hjalti's reference performance alone makes you believe that this hammer is THAT delicious.

Perfecting the Chop

Now that the campfire shot is wrapped, let's take a look at its journey to the finish line. The fish needed a bit more detail, so Andy hopped back into shading and texturing the props for closeups.

We have two versions of the fish in the film: a living one, caught by the Raccoon, and a cooked one that's already lost its head. For the in-between moment, Hjalti did something sneaky. He used the "alive" fish rig duplicated twice: in one version, the body was scaled down; in the other, the head was scaled down, timed to when the chop happens. This meant there was no way to texture the sliced part properly, so as a quick and dirty solution, Andy modeled the cross-section of the fish and constrained it to the rig to appear at the right moment. Super hacky (no pun intended), but it works!

The fire got some attention as well: Simon brought over a cartoony smoke setup from "Wing It", which Andy animated in the shots.

Building the Outskirts

Construction of the Outskirts is almost complete, as the landscape, inspired by the coziness of a small Dutch town, takes its final shape. Buildings received more care and detail, and the procedural sky and blocky placeholder buildings were swapped with a matte painting. As you might remember from last week's concept art, we also wanted an old, derelict windmill in the background to complete the "dutchification" of the landscape, and it's now in place. There's still some polish to do, which will happen next week.

Spikes Engineering

Character shading is approaching its final stage, and Hedgehog got a lot more attention last week. The most important decision to make was where exactly to land on the scale from fuzzy, cuddly fluff to sharp, pointy spikes, and the team has now dialed that in.

Besides that, there are lots more details to be seen in the closeup shots, and the painterly 3D look of the environment and characters is really starting to come together.

That's it for now. Thank you for supporting OVERGROWN. We will be back next week with more news regarding the project!