Help Save Our Upland Water Voles
Our second collaboration with the Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru is a wonderfully evocative story highlighting the protection of endangered water voles in Wales. Fully animated and rendered in Blender by the Cloth Cat team, the short film shows how a water vole faces challenges on its way to find a new wetlands home.
The initial story idea came from Rob Parry of the INCC and was built upon by Jon Rennie and Tom Lucas with a detailed storyboard. The film was designed to be more cinematic and emotional, and fit within the 60 second limit that some social media platforms impose.
Kim McCarthy built the CG vole and produced a full fur groom and then rigger Josh Lucas took his quadruped rig and updated it for the latest version of Blender. Kim also built all the environments based on the original storyboards, location sketches and a mood board of Welsh valleys photos.
Josh did the layout for each scene and Jon did basic blocking of the characters, as well as work with Kim on a lighting scheme that built on the templates started on the Bitesize project the previous year. Sehyun Cho animated the water vole, using reference photos and videos supplied by Rob who had recently visited some of the real wetlands nesting sites.
Once the edit was locked, composer Brollyman started work on the score – a huge challenge given the very short running time. Jon and Brolly went through a number of references and discussed how the music could best draw out the emotion in each scene. The subtle notes and final melody really enhance the beautiful visuals.
The final film is a team triumph, and we’re grateful to Rob and The Initiative for Nature Conservation Cymru in Carmarthen for the opportunity to help save a population of this rare species, whose ecology is still little understood.
Follow the link to find out more about their ongoing research:
www.natureconservation.wales
