Creative Archive

Red & The Kingdom Of Sound

Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide To The Orchestra

Deanna Crisbacher
3D Artist / Animator / Compositor
Red & The Kingdom of Sound is a 3D animation adapting Benjamin Britten’s music composition The
Young Person’s Guide To The Orchestra. This project is a collaboration between UCA’s BA (Hons)
Computer Animation Arts course and An Orchestra Network for Europe (ONE). A small team of
tutors, students, and alumni worked for several months to bring this 17-minute animation to life.
One of the aims of this collaboration is to show children around Europe that classic music is
beautiful, fun, and has many uses such as storytelling. Classic music is present in our lives more
than we realise…films often use classic music for the soundtrack of the film to convey emotions,
suspense, action, and more. I hope that it inspires children to pursue music and/or animation.
I was picked up to help with this project in May 2017 as an internship. My title is 3D Artist / Animator
/ Compositor, but I worked on a large range of tasks. I really enjoyed working on this project and being
able to experience what it is like to work with a team of people to create an ambitious film for a client. I
was also able to see the film’s premiere in France in front of a live orchestra and an audience.
3D Modelling & Digital Set Building
Some of the firsts tasks I worked on involved 3D modelling and digital set building. As I worked on
building digital sets using assets that others have already created I would model any missing objects
such as lifts, signs, pillars, roads, and bridges. As our pipeline changed, I went over any already made
assets to ensure the geometry was suitable and I sometimes tweaked digital sets others originally built.
The Overture Digital Set
The Oboe District Digital Set
The Oboe District Digital Set
The Oboe District Digital Set
The Clarinet District Digital Set
The Clarinet District Digital Set
The Clarinet District Digital Set
The Viola District Digital Set
The Viola District Digital Set
The Horn District Digital Set
The Horn District Digital Set
The Harp District Digital Set Tweak
The Cello District Digital Set Tweak
The Cello District Digital Set Tweak
The Overture Lift 3D Model
The Overture Departure Board 3D Model
The Overture Map 3D Model
The Oboe District Bridge 3D Models
The Viola District Sign 3D Model

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The Viola District
Pre-Vis & Environment Animation
One of the other roles I had was to help create pre-visualisation animations. These files had to be
approved first, then the camera would be locked down. This allowed the environment to be sent
off for rendering while character animation files could be created so our character animators could
fine-tune the blocked in animation from the pre-vis.
The Clarinet District Pre-Vis
The Violin District Pre-Vis
The Viola District Pre-Vis
The Cello District Pre-Vis
Finale Pre-Vis
Texturing
Texturing ended up becoming my favourite job while working on this project. I always enjoyed
texturing because I feel the characters and environments come to life once colour and details are
added to them. Some sets I textured from scratch but some I was given to just tweak or add some
additional detail gobo lights onto the floor/ground.
The Percussion District Texturing
The Percussion District Texturing
The Viola District Texturing
The Viola District Texturing
The Double-Bass District Texturing
The Double-Bass District Texturing
The Horn District Texturing
The Horn District Texturing
Finale Texturing
 The Flute District Texturing Tweaks
Before

After
 The Violin District Texturing Tweaks
Before

After
Sign Translations
I was in responsible for adding the different text translations onto various signs in our film. This
includes English, French, German, Polish, Slovenian, Slovak, and Bulgarian. Since I can only speak
English, I had to be careful to not make mistakes. I also had to do my best to match text animation to
the camera animation. Each shot required different techniques and additional animation and/or masks.
Overture Map Text
Overture Departure Board Text
Overture Departure Board Text
Overture Lift Text
Overture Lift Text
Overture Sign Text
Overture Sign Text
The Oboe District Sign Text
The Clarinet District Sign Text
The Bassoon District Sign Text
The Violin District Sign Text
The Viola District Sign Text
The Cello District Sign Text
The Double-Bass District Sign Text
The Harp District Sign Text
The Harp District Sign Text
The Horn District Sign Text
The Trumpet District Sign Text
The Trumpet District Sign Text
The Trombone & Tuba District Sign Text
The Percussion District Sign Text
Compositing
As a compositor, it was my job to take all of the render passes and layer them together in the appropriate order using After
Effects. Each scene was different and contained different passes such as beauty, matte, sky, glow, guiding light, and
sometimes separate passes for individual objects. The characters could have 2-4 passes (outline, fill, and masks) per group
of characters rendered together. It was also my job to add the sign text and additional animation/effects during this stage
such as clouds, smoke, noise, and vignettes. It was important to keep everything neat and organised so I didn’t get
confused.
The Viola District - Untextured / Pre-vis / Final Composite
The Double-Bass District - Untextured / Pre-vis / Final Composite
The Double-Bass District - Untextured / Pre-vis / Final Composite
The Horn District - Untextured / Pre-vis / Final Composite
The Percussion District - Untextured / Pre-vis / Final Composite
Finale - Untextured / Pre-vis / Final Composite
Other
During this project I worked with particles in Maya on several occasions. One example is for the
final shot of the film, where the characters have turned into music notes and float around the
Kingdom of Sound like the Rings of Saturn. I also used particle systems set up by others on the
team to animate fish for the pre-vis.
I also helped with some of the rendering on this project. I mostly rendered the main characters and
sky passes. Most of the environment and crowd passes went to a render farm. I also tried to render
any remade shots or shots that were missing. This also required a lot of organisation as I rendered
175+ files for different characters, skies, environments, and more.
On a rare occasion I worked on some rigging. This was mostly to ensure that the lift in The
Overture could be animated easily and to allow the buildings in The Clarinet District to squash and
stretch. The Clarinet Buildings were animated using deformers which I then connected into a main
control so they were easier to animate.