Wendel’s Wonder Wagon began as a simple Christmas idea and grew into a fully animated short film inspired by classic stop-motion storytelling. This is a behind-the-scenes look at how the story, characters and animation came to life.
The Journey
With Fun, Partnership and Community being core values for TKG, we enjoy making every Christmas season special for the people we serve. This year, we intended to do something different, something big. We intended to start planning early so we could get in front of the deadlines, but like all great “unpaid” work plans in the business world, the July start date turned into mid-October amid ongoing client work and big projects. The plan for a fully animated short film had to be reduced in scope to a shadow of its former self. I was devastated, and in my initial disappointment, I wanted to scrap the whole idea. I had been expecting to make this short film for a full year. Fortunately, I was surrounded by caring, encouraging teammates who saw the charm of the story and characters and helped me continue to believe there was still something there. A week before animation was set to start, we rewrote the whole story to become the narrated, rhyming production that became the film you were able to enjoy today. The struggle actually allowed us to distill and refine and get to the core of what we were trying to say: Technology is meaningless if it isn't serving people.
Ironically, the journey of this film’s production mirrors Wendel’s own path, picking up the seemingly broken pieces and building something better. I can’t think of a better showcase of TKG’s core values in action than a culture that practices them so naturally that it accidentally aligns with the fictional story we created to showcase them. Together, we pushed through the challenges and delivered a project that is arguably better, more nostalgic and heartfelt than the original idea. Special thanks to great teammates: Leanne, for being willing/able to manage an impossible timeline; Molly, for always being a champion for positivity and creativity; Dexter, for having a “whatever you need” mindset to get this to the finish line; Quinn, for extrapolating the art into designs for the gift boxes. These wonderful people are the same ones who I get to work with in serving our clients every day, with the same level of integrity, commitment and passion.
Before I get too emotional, we should have a look behind the scenes of how the production was developed.
The Concept
The designs for Wendel and his horse draw from the Rankin/Bass classic, Jack Frost. Originally, there were going to be two horses, named Rolli and Polli. Only Polli survived the scope restraints, but with a much smaller part.
The angular designs for the SparkWagon below were created to showcase its speed, but also reflect the mechanical, cold and impersonal nature of technology.
Below are concepts for the SparkWagon departure clock. To further push the mechanical and technological tone, we decided to use a timer with numerical digits that is closer to a digital face than a traditional analog design.
Production
The Wendel’s Wonder Wagon short film was created and animated in Blender 3D in around 3 weeks, mixed in the pipeline with ongoing client work. Again, shout out to the team who made this project happen. If you’ve missed the 2-minute short film, but are still reading this article, here it is:
Using the hard-drawn concept art, we created Wendel’s 3D model in Blender and placed his “bones” to be able to pose and animate him. This digital bone-based system stems from traditional stop-motion studios (such as Rankin/Bass), which used a metal armature to support and pose the characters.
The trees were created in a similar way to how they were made in Rankin/Bass’ Rudolph movie. Simple branch shapes were modeled, curved into a circle and stacked to become the layers of the pine tree. The original film used felt material, so we covered ours in digital felt textures and added 5000+ hair particles to simulate a felt texture.
Let's Bring Stories to Life
If you have a story to tell or an idea to bring to life, don’t do it alone. Find some teammates and build something better together. If you don’t know where to start or have anyone in mind, I believe I know some people.
The TKG Wendel’s Wonder Wagon team hopes you and yours had the very best Christmas and holiday season.
