Warchefs - 2021
"Warchefs" is my graduation project and the most important work I did in 2021. The world and the scenario were completed in the last quarter of 2020. The project went through a turbulent production process between May and June 2021. Because of it, only 80% of the movie got completed. The primary purpose of this movie, which was prepared under the consultancy of Emre Zengineken, was to produce the best quality animation a student can put together and to create a dynamic story that supports it.
Since Studio Ghibli's work inspired me in many ways, I tried to capture a similar taste to theirs in my film. Dynamism has a remarkable place in my work. For this, the behavior of my characters had to be as expressive as possible. Therefore, by examining the expressionist attitudes of Nintendo's Wario and Waluigi duo, I took notes that could add to my creation.
With a sudden decision change in the second half of June, content worth two minutes got removed from the original production. This change, which got made due to the approaching deadline, caused most character interactions to get deleted, yet the story had no vast alterations.
In the original finale, which was prepared in November 2020, the ship, which was badly damaged because of the Sky Pirates, crashes on a deserted island. So the logistics cannot reach the battlefront and we see the soldiers starving to death. The juries didn’t like the finale. They stated that this ending is too dark and the tone shift is too sudden. After these claims, a new, much more fitting ending was written for the story. In the new finale, the damaged ship would have fallen directly in the middle of the battlefield, bringing the logistics to the soldiers. In this scene, which we will see from the first-person point of view, a scene was planned where the dog named “Ciros” from Ceren Nur Erdogan's movie "Tint" will take the sandwich from one of our chefs. However, this could not made in to the final product due to time constraints.
The concept and design phase was the fastest completed phase. Since I was creating the designs simultaneously while creating the story of the movie, this stage was completed without any issues. I didn't have to create a design document that I had to stick with because I was working alone and I know what I was doing. That's why my design file consists of fast sketches I made to speed up the decision process.
I completed the design of the chefs when I started the animating phase. I had my design ready for Big Chef, but I wasn't sure about the sketches I made for Young Chef. Should I make it more mature like Big Chief, or should I make it younger and strengthen the contrast factor between them? Because it would support the action element more, I redesigned it as a young and dynamic person.
I was sure of the Sky Pirates' designs from the very beginnig. So much so that I designed the pirates before the main characters, the Chef Bros. Actually, I didn't need any another sketch after the first, but I loved them so much that I kept drawing them.
Warchefs - 2021 Cut Animatic
Warchefs - 2020 First Draft Animatic
The making of Warchefs was a very difficult but enjoyable process. The characters I used in this project are not characters that I want to leave behind. In the future, I would like to reuse them in projects with higher production power.