BEHIND THE SCENES - "Maple Vs. The Soldier Constructs"

Seeing as how Karolyn could pass as a Pikmin character, I wanted to take on The Legend of Zelda with another character, so I chose Maple. I wanted to try animating something that was primarily action-oriented, while also simplifying a TOTK design. The Solider Constructs looked like they'd be fun to see get bashed, so I chose those.

Here's some early sketches for the Constructs. It was pretty easy to land a design for them.

A few doodles of Maple, too. I held off on the armor, since the original idea of the TOTK Bits was that she'd collect armor or clothing as she'd progress through the land.

The rest of her face was originally in this shot. It's kinda cute, I must say.

After Maple takes one of their spears, she was gonna swing a second time, then swing off-screen.

The original sketch of Maple looking back to the incoming spear.

 This is the original keyframe for when Maple prepares to thrust the spear to the Construct.

This was one of the Bits that I crunched hard on, also one I feel I could have done better with. I feel that Maple's hair was too similar to Link's in this, as well. I was thinking of doing more after this, but I wanted to focus on Pikmin Bits for the time being, and hold off on doing anything this intensive. I would also wanna drop the TOTK angle, and just have it be about Maple herself.

Since this Bit was finished, Maple's design had changed, and if I were to make it today, she'd look more like this. I wanted her face to be cuter, and add a ton of shadows to make her more of a mystery. I'd definitely be up for animating something involving her again.

There were also three bits of animation that went unused/unfinished, which will be attached as .mp4 files to this post.

The first one was a shot cut from when Maple took one of the spears, broke it in half and started beating one of the Constructs. It was cut, since the scenes were changing too fast.

The second one was a shot of Maple dodging the incoming spear by stepping backwards offscreen. It was cut for the same reason as before.

The last one didn't get past the animatic stage. It was a more elaborate take on the Construct trying to take Maple down for good. One part of that animatic I feel didn't read as well was the Construct doing the DK spin into the ground to launch some rocks at Maple, so she counters by ricocheting one of the rocks at the antennae-lookin' thing on it's head. The deadline was creeping up, so I went for something simpler.

Glad to see ya here! I'll be back with more production extras as I find them! Hope to see ya again, you voluptuous supporter!

~KARO '24