A time ago I set out to make a lil animation about a bean stew with spices and vegetables that is often prepared here in Georgia, usually made / served in clay pots. The idea was to use recipe as a script and turn it into a short, but filling motion graphics piece.
I am not much of a cook myself, so finding “right” recipe for a script proved to be harder than I anticipated - turns out there are thousand and one ways you can prepare beans and people have their preferences on what herbs and spices to use and how to serve the dish. After a bit more searching, I decided to go with one that I felt was more authentic and would look best on screen.
As soon as recipe was dealt with I dove head first into storyboarding to figure out shots and pacing, then I cut thumbnails into a rough animatic, using music track as a pacemaker.
I had a specific look and feel in mind - a sequence of cascading shots, filmed with simple frontal and top-down camera angles and narrow lenses. This would flatten everything out, transforming 3d spaces into something resembling theatrical decorations.
Once storyboard was locked down, I took thumbnail drawings and turned them into fully fleshed out style frames. For this I jumped straight into 3D. 3D viewport can sometimes act like a portal into another world where you can easily get lost, so I always kept referring back to original sketches and built up final frames based on them.
Below are some technical breakdowns showing assets and other material that was created for this project. Animation is a combo of keyframes and a bit of particle and rigid body sims. For smoke movement, ribbons and material transitions I relied heavily on procedural maps. God bless Georgy Voronoi.
Overall, this project turned out to be quite fruitful for me — picked up some new skills (artistic and technical), solidified old ones and more importantly, it highlighted some inefficiencies with my workflow and approach that I can address.
If you are still here— thanks for scrolling all the way through and smash that blue button if you liked what you saw.
