FINAL ACT

ROLES

Executive Production; Story; Soundtrack; Editorial; 3D Modeling, Layout, Lighting, and Render; Animation; VFX; Sound Design and Mixing

ABOUT

Short 2D animation thesis film. After witnessing the murder of a famous actress, Mateus Santos, a young intern, has the chance of a life time to join the renowned journalist Miriam Matos in her investigation. Together, they question the three suspects of the case, analyzing their statements to find the truth.

PERIOD

August 2023 - December 2024. Release estimate: 2026

GENRE

Mystery, comedy

Color - Digital - 13min

Final Act was our thesis short film of Film and Animation major at FAAP. The project was conceived with the purpose of exploring a myriad of techniques and visual languages, and the story became a reflection of the period the direction team found themselves in life, young adults entering the labor market.

Heavily inspired by Rashomon (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1950), we decided to tell a murder mystery in which the investigation advances through the subjective accounts of the suspects. Each flashback pays homage to different animation styles (experimental techniques with watercolor, cut-out, and limited animation), combining with each of the characters that tell their version of the facts. As for the method, we mixed rigged with full animation, making great use of heads with master controllers.

This was the biggest production of our academic careers, working through 9 months straight with more than 90 collaborators of different areas. Organizing the production efficiently was crucial to meet with deadlines and submit a final product with much quality to the Thesis Defense Committee. We graduated with honors, as the thesis film with the highest grade of the program as of present time.

3D BACKGROUNDS

Blocking

Since our goal with the project was to explore and expand our skills in many techniques, we chose to make all backgrounds taking place in the present time of the story in Autodesk Maya and render them with Arnold to achieve a 2D look.

To get the expected results, at first we used the basic tools of the shader aiToon with final touches with Photoshop. However, during the sequence of Mateus's epiphany, one of the backgrounds had to be rendered in video because of the camera movement proposed by the storyboard, and for that we turned to Substance Painter for texturing and PaintFX for the outlines. We used this technique for every background of this sequence to keep the art direction equal.