Hff’s Little Star

We developed the story with our professor Jürgen Schopper back in October 2023. Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira, Jonas Kluger, Berter Orpak and our team assistant Petra Hereth enriched and strongly supported this intensive process. During the weekly meetings, we were able to discuss our concept ideas and aesthetic approaches with each other. Our shared love for 2D animation also brought our film team together, consisting of Vanessa Ramovic, Sonja Latussek and Elena Rid. We wanted to work together on a story that would make everyone’s “inner child” shine again.

by Vanessa Ramovic, Sonja Latussek and Elena Rid

At an internal meeting, we came up with the idea of using the stars as a medium for a look into our own past. The film should not only be family-friendly, but also appeal to an emotion that touches older audiences. “Little Star” revolves around astronomer Mina, who rediscovers her lost passion for the stars through a magical encounter with her younger self. The encounter – an emotional climax to the story – also reflects our journey while working on the film. We also went back to our roots in animation and used that to create something new. To better understand the depth of our character and further elaborate the story, we received great support from psychologist Dr. Walter Stehling, who led a seminar on the hero’s journey and character motivation.

Concept Art: Night-Time Desertadventures

We decided to choose a solitary setting in an observatory that was deserted except for one workstation, to better represent the extent of Mina’s overtime impact on her daily life. All the lights except for her PC screen should be off while Mina sits alone at her desk and works away. Our producer Pearl Fröhlich organised for us to spend a day together with some students and research assistants from the Munich University Observatory in Bogenhausen. Field trip!

They gave us great first-hand information about the daily routine and everyday life in an observatory. We designed thick tube monitors for an authentic depiction of the 80s in our film, a desk littered with instant noodle cups and paper litter and – naturally for an observatory – a gigantic telescope in the middle of the room. There were also piles of boxes filled with documents, star analyses and star observations. Posters and a diploma at Mina’s workplace are intended to tell part of our character’s story visually. The observatory was to stand alone in a desert landscape. For the interior and the desert colours, we looked for references week after week, which we used as a template for our drawings until we were completely satisfied with the look of the film.

Two character designs for one character

In the character design of Mina, as an overworked workaholic, we specifically wanted to visually emphasise the influence of her monotonous everyday life on her life. Character development also played a major role here: How much importance does she attach to a well-groomed appearance? What does she eat during her breaks? Does she take breaks at all? It was important for us to be able to read her basic behaviour from her appearance.

While Mina is exhausted and overworked, her younger self, whom we have affectionately christened “little star” to keep her apart, is a playful child who doesn’t shy away from big adventures in nature. In the earliest concept drawings, Mina still had long blonde hair and a white coat – Little Star, on the other hand, wore glasses, braces and a bright red superhero cape. After a few variations, we came up with a warm, everyday outfit for Mina instead and a hairstyle that doesn’t require too much styling in the morning. For the little one, we chose a wide and airy jumpsuit that she can jump around in.

To emphasise the visual similarity between the two characters, we gave Mina a small scar on her cheek, which she once got on her childhood adventures. Little Star, on the other hand, has a plaster in the same place. After many different concepts, we gradually found the right designs for Mina and Little Star that successfully reflect their character traits.

Animatic: Bringing drawings to Life

Starting with tiny sketches on our tablets and mobile phones, we drew the first visual storyboards based on rough script ideas. These evolved week by week with various ideas and changes to the camera angles. We discarded some shots in order to achieve a final result that better reflected our message and the character of Mina.

With the support of Prof. Michael Coldewey, we finalised our storyboards, created a 2D animatic with the help of Dr. Rodolfo Silveira and, thanks to the great mentoring of Berter Orpak, turned it into a 3D animated pre-visualisation. To do this, we built rough models of our desert in Blender to determine the focal lengths of our camera. Our preliminary Mina model and initial experiments with the magical star swirls that appear later in the film also found a place in the desert. We then merged our renders with hand-drawn 2D frames in Adobe Premiere. We quickly found the first solutions for having a 3D character interact with a 2D character and decided on a mostly static camera language for the sake of feasibility. We ultimately used the final 3D animatic as a reference for our final film shots.

Mina: Character Modelling and Rigging

The first step was to model Mina completely ourselves. As we were all beginners in this field, we were initially surprised by the amount of work involved in the process. However, after a few concepts, we found our feet and worked our way towards Mina’s design using a prefabricated base model from Blender.

Editing her face proved to be particularly time-consuming, as she had to retain her sharply stylised lips exactly as in our concept artwork and still look like her younger self, for example. Sonja adapted the proportions of her face to our drawings, first from the front and then from the side, and also gave her a round nose and reworked her ears. She worked on the hair at the end: each strand of hair consists of two curves, which we edited into meshes shortly before rigging. Elena Rid designed and modelled Mina’s clothes herself from scratch.

Desert Horizons and Offices
– Environment design!

The special thing about our film is that it only takes place at night and in front of and inside a large observatory in the middle of a desert. We wanted to tell the story of the character’s everyday life through the furnishings of the office and a vast, empty stone desert. So it was a task to fill the vast space and Mina’s workplace with a few objects. First, Vanessa Ramovic built rough shaders for the round walls and metallic grids in Blender. In the meantime, Elena modelled some objects herself – such as Mina’s table lamp – and gave them the finishing touches in the subsequent matte painting.

A layout that was considered during the design phase helped us to set up Mina’s office and stack all the objects on her desk in a harmonious yet chaotic way. Through the hand-drawn reworking, we also managed to make the room look fuller, darker or dirtier.

We also worked by hand on all the posters and the diploma that hangs above Mina’s desk. Elena built the basic model of the desert using Geometry Nodes in Blender. We chose a painterly surface, which we didn’t create in Blender’s shading process, but also laid over the desert using Elena’s hand-painted matte paintings. Vanessa used noise textures in the “World” shader to depict a starry sky at night. When the sky moved, she placed the star shader on a sphere and animated it using keyframes.

Stardust Effects in FX

To bring Mina’s childhood passion and love for the stars to life, we worked on a colourful interplay of stars in the sky. As the film progressed, these were to build up into a whole vortex of stars that revolved around Mina and Little Star. We designed a 2D-like aesthetic for the vortex that would fit into both Mina’s 3D world and Little Star’s 2D world. After some experimentation, Vanessa simulated the animated star effect in a geometry node tree. This uses a curve that defines the path of the vortex. She made design decisions such as the density or direction of the vortex in Blender’s shading mode. We always turned to our 3D mentor Benc Orpak for suggestions and questions. He helped us to rework overlapping edges or unclean areas of the vortex. Basically, Vanessa used two differently developed versions of the simulation, which were configured, detailed and scaled differently. She manually reworked the vortex in each shot, depending on the perspective and distance from which it was viewed.

For individual shooting stars, she reduced the geometry nodes to such an extent that instead of a vortex, only a colourful starburst was visible, which we could place at different positions in the sky. We generated the particles with an invisible particle emitter that follows the path of a spiral curve, the radius of which became larger and larger as it progressed. We used emission shaders in the colours of the star vortex for each component of the particle system. Sonja made further corrections per frame afterwards in the 2D animation.

Embodying characters in MoCap

We had the opportunity to familiarise ourselves with the technology of motion capture suits and were then able to apply this to “Little Star”. We received a lot of support and a great introduction from our lecturer David Emmenlauer. After an intensive casting process, initiated by our producer Pearl Fröhlich, we found the perfect actress for our character in Franzi Frey. Once we had attached the motion sensors to our actress, the one-day shoot could begin. We collected all the data on movement, acceleration and orientation in Movella’s Xsens system, which is available at our university.

The software reconstructed every movement into a virtual 3D world so that we could transfer it to our 3D character in Maya and Blender. We used animation layers to refine the movements and make corrections. Franzi Frey provided us with many versions of individual shots so that we could understand what kind of movements were recorded more precisely than others. She moved like a real cartoon character herself and breathed life into our character with deliberately exuberant body movements. Meanwhile, the rest of our film team alternated between different positions. We also acted as partners in the film scene or directed the shoot ourselves.

Animation in 2D and 3D

As hand movements and facial expressions could not be recorded by the motion capture system, we animated some of the shots. Using the Blender add-on Animation Layers, we were able to move Mina’s body parts in different layers, set keyframes and thus animate them. We used the Blender add-on Auto-Rig Pro for our character’s rig and corrected complications in the rig with Sonja’s elaborate weight paintings. Inconsistencies from the motion capture could be corrected with our own animations. Frame by frame, we moved our character’s rig to the right place and set our keyframes piece by piece. We received great support from our lecturer, Prof Melanie Beisswenger, who explained the basic theory of animation technology to us before we started the practical application.

For the little girl, we drew each individual frame in the traditional way. We used the ProCreate and Krita apps on our digital tablets to do this. In the group, we split up any film shots so that Elena could work on 2D keyframes and Sonja on her inbetweens at the same time.

For the 2D animation, we orientated ourselves strongly on Elena’s reference videos that she had previously recorded. Finally, we placed great importance on a distinctive body language that would give Little Star character even without dialogue. The biggest challenge for us was the interaction between Mina and Little Star. To achieve this, Sonja and Elena split the previously generated 3D animations into individual keyframes and drew Little Star into the scene frame by frame. Vanessa supported them in the lineart and colouring process.

Lighting under a starry sky

The special feature of our film is that it only takes place at night. We worked on various lighting concepts to tell the visual story of the look we had conceived. After consulting with the group, we used these to create a colour sheet for our film. It was clear that almost all the lights in the observatory should be off, while a bright moonlight should shine into the building. Thanks to great support from our lecturer Kathrin Hawelka, we gained a deeper insight into master lighting and shot lighting.

With a mixture of the changed sun position in Blenders Sky Texture and a strong spotlight, Vanessa simulated a soft moonlight at night. Using Area Lights, Sonja lifted our character from the background and gave her more definition in the face. Inside the observatory, Vanessa also worked mostly with area lights, for example on the PC screen. The moonlight in the opening of the observatory was created using a spotlight.

Finding the right light colour and temperature proved difficult at first. Our concept was to start the film with the coldest and darkest colours possible. However, as soon as Mina meets her little self, a warm colour appears for the first time in the film with the girl’s striking red jumpsuit. With the help of the fantastic starry vortex, which we designed in shades of cyan and purple, the colourful tones take over Mina’s surroundings and the astronomer herself. The colours represent a return to her inner child and her deep enthusiasm for the stars. Thanks to the amazing colour grading by Claudia Fuchs, we were able to highlight some parts of the film even more and give the film a final polish.

Melodies of Magic: Sounds and Music

Even in the earliest sketches of our animatics, in which Sonja had already incorporated existing film music as references, it was clear that we wanted to go in a direction with the music that would strike an emotional chord. We found great inspiration in many works by Pixar. Back in April 2024, we discussed our musical perspectives and ideas with our composer Julia Chen, whom we met as part of a collaboration between the HFF Munich and the Munich University of Music and Theatre. Working with her was a unique experience, as our wishes and ideas immediately went in the same direction. Shortly afterwards, we received the first musical sketches for our early and unfinished 3D animatics, which already impressively summarised the dimensions of our film.

After a lively exchange, we jointly decided to place a major climax in the music on the embrace of Mina and Little Star. We also asked Julia Chen to personally record the vocals for the credits. We are over the moon with the end result and were very happy to bring them together with our film sounds. Even without dialogue in the film, it was important to record sounds such as breathing, laughing or groaning in a sound booth. Our team member Elena lent her voice to both Mina and Little Star in the final film. All the voice recordings were made in a recording studio at the HFF and the music academy. Many of our sounds could be taken from our internal sound library at the university, and additional Foley sounds could also be recorded in the studio if necessary. The final 5.1 mix of sound, music and voices for our final mix was created by our sound mixer Gerhard Auer.

Magical Adjustments in Compositing

The compositing was created by Vanessa and Elena in DaVinci Fusion. The core of the work was the merging of 2D matte paintings and hand-drawn 2D animations into the three-dimensional Blender scene. The interactions between Mina and Little Star had to look fluid and not leave any gaps, which was a big challenge for a short time. In some cases, we corrected every single frame by hand. We placed the matte paintings as PNGs with an alpha channel over the 3D renders. Vanessa gave the star swirls in particular a major compositing polish. She corrected some of the colours, added blurring and enhanced the lighting effects. We made the particles shine all the brighter. One of the biggest challenges for us was to place 2D matte paintings in a scene with a moving camera – as is the case with the meeting of Mina and Little Star. As a solution, Elena added her drawing to the Blender scene itself instead of compositing it. By drawing the matte paintings several times, she found out where the most parallax occurs when the camera is moved more strongly. Based on this, she divided the background into eight different layers, which we inserted as planes in Blender and moved over the 3D desert. The process resembled staggered stage elements in terms of perspective and turned out to make sense in retrospect.

Starry Adventures in retrospect

Life is through and through a collection of many experiences and adventures that shape us into the people we are today. Many of us probably also know what it feels like to be frustrated or on the verge of burnout. However, only very few of us talk about it, which is why we want to take the big step with our short film of addressing people who may be struggling in their job or everyday life, or even those who have lost sight of their own preferences, hobbies and passions. After working on “Little Star” for two semesters and half a summer, we were finally able to show the film to a larger and more diverse audience, including some professional eyes from the industry, on 28 November 2024 at the VFX Reel 2024 at the HFF. We would like to take this opportunity to thank our team assistant Petra Hereth for organising our premiere and the numerous support from all the visitors. It would be a pleasure for us to be able to present the film at other occasions such as festivals afterwards. We hope that the audience will enjoy Mina’s adventures – but also that they will give their own inner little star a big hug after seeing the film!

Summary and Producer’s Notes

The “Little Star” project was already in its infancy when I approached the team consisting of Sonja Latussek, Vanessa Ramovic and Elena Rid. Having just arrived at the HFF, it was my heart’s desire to be able to take part in an animated film within reach. The VFX department and the students of the 2023 class worked closely together in weekly meetings (weeklies), which I was able to attend for the first time in November and then experience the development of the film throughout the year.

by Pearl Fröhlich

The filmmakers impressed the supervising chair and myself with their precise and creative
brainstorming phase and quickly moved on to script development. The team was quickly joined by our composer Julia Chen, who had also worked on “Schattenspiel” from the previous year. The proximity between us and the music academy made it easy to work closely together, which gave everyone an instructive insight into the work processes of both trades.

For the design of the space and the characters, we went on a joint research trip as a team to the university observatory in Munich, which Dr Oliver Friedrich organised and designed together with us. On site, the scientific staff shared their knowledge and enthusiasm for the field of astronomy with us, which gave us deeper access to Mina and Little Star.

Mina was brought to life by actress Franzi Frey on a day of motion capture filming in the HFF’s in-house studio, supervised by David Emmenlauer. The three filmmakers took it in turns to act in the role of the starlet. After a steep learning curve, the motion capture data and reference recordings made it easier to realise the final animated version.

The chair of the VFX degree programme, consisting of Prof. Jürgen Schopper, Dr Rodolfo Anes Silveira, Berter Orpak, Jonas Kluger and Petra Hereth, supported the entire process with their expertise. The project and all those involved went through many intensive phases in its creation and there was a shared anticipation of the final premiere of the film at the VFX-Reel 2024 in November this year at the HFF.

I would like to thank you for the many learning opportunities and experiences gained, which have given me further training for future projects and left me with an enthusiasm for digital production.

From the production side, I would like to personally thank Lissy Giglberger, Ina Mikkat, the production manager of the project, and Daniel Zitzer, the production assistant, who have strongly supported and strengthened me through the first year of this project.

Team

A Film By: Vanessa Ramovic – Elena Rid – Sonja Latussek
Script / Modeling / Texturing / Rigging / Lighting / Compositing By: Vanessa Ramovic – Elena Rid – Sonja Latussek
Musical Score, Song & Vocals By: Julia Chen
Produced By: Pearl Fröhlich
Mina Actress: Franzi Frey
Project Supervision: Prof. Jürgen Schopper
Project Consultant: Dr. Rodolfo Anes Silveira
Visual Effects Pipeline TD: Jonas Kluger
Mentor 3D Computer Animation: Berter Orpak
Line Producer: Ina Mikkat
Team Assistant Line Producer: Ron Sikkes
Team Assistance: Petra Hereth
Colour Grading: Claudia Fuchs
Sound Design & Re-Recording Mixer: Gerhard Auer
Audio Consulting: Andreas Goldbrunner
Audio Consulting: Stefan Möhl
Editing Support: Yuval Tzafrir

Studio Management: Peter Gottschall
Studio Management: Andreas Beckert
Scheduling: Beate Bailas
Scheduling: Sabina Kannewischer
Voice Acting: Elena Rid

Thanks To Our Tutors!
3D Animation: Prof. Melanie Beisswenger
Storyboard: Prof. Michael Coldewey
Motion Capture: David Emmenlauer
Lighting: Kathrin Hawelka
Modeling & Rigging: Benc Orpak
Characterbuilding: Dr. Walter Stehling
Cinematography: Dr. Rodolfo Anes Siilveira
Rendering: Jonas Kluger
Overall Management: Prof. Jürgen Schopper

Special Thanks To:
Jim Obmann – Emil Pogolski – Vanessa Chu – Ina Mikkat – Edgar Bauer – Paula Wodniok – Mayra
Ebensen – Silvia Loose – Franz Stoecker – Felix Zachau – Yuval Tzafrir – Mika Angeli – Lissy Giglberger