“Piggy’s Predicament” (circa 1996 – 2001)

Here’s a sneak peek at some early, work-in-progress (albeit “in-progress” quite a few years ago) computer animation mischief from Piggy’s Predicament. 

These bite-size clips are pulled from a roadshow pitch package — the kind of traveling show-and-tell that would’ve made old studio publicists reach for their sharpest suits and shiniest superlatives. But don’t let the rough edges fool you: this is how the sausage (and the cinema) gets made.

In production, we run an absurd number of “pencil tests” — quick renders we use to audition everything: character rigging, acting choices, texture, lighting, timing… and then we tweak, re-render, and do it again. And again. And again. (If you’ve ever heard film folks romanticize “We’ll fix it in post,” this is what they mean — only with more patience and fewer sandwiches.)

For a sense of the long game: two of our character models took roughly three years to evolve into forms that could perform up to our high-level specifications.

Aesthetically, we’re chasing a sort of tunable realism— the ability to dial believability up or down depending on the scene, like a cinematographer riding exposure or a sound designer sweetening a punch. The goal is verisimilitude when we want it… and a clean getaway from the uncanny valley when we don’t.

So consider these clips a peek behind the curtain: rough, rambunctious, and mid-transformation — but very much on their way to the final magic trick…

And it’s well worth mentioning that the getting there wouldn’t be half as pleasant were it not for having our good friend JAV (aka John Avarese) score all the music and sfx for all our animations!