Melody of Life

Melody of Life is a 360° animated short developed in Spring of 2017 at the Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center. In response to a prompt to use toys to tell a story about cultural connectedness through music and dance, I and the five other Masters students comprising Ripieno Animation Studio designed and developed this piece in 15 weeks.

We were sensitive to the fact that we were not experts in the cultures represented here, so we recruited expert musicians and dancers from each culture and style to consult on everything from character design to composition. By the end of the semester, we had worked with 13 musicians, 4 dancers, and a motion capture studio, effectively tripling our team's size. 

For more information on our design process, please see our website and development blog.

Credits

Ripieno
Flora Cheng - 3D Character Artist, Texture Artist
Julian Korzeniowsky - Sound Designer, Composer
Mengyang Li - Concept Artist, 2D Artist
Prasanth Raviraman - Motion Capture Artist, Animator
Melissa Schoeller - Producer, Story Artist
Sharon You - Art Director, Environment Modeler, VFX Artist

Dancers
Javier Spivey - Manny
Victoria Peechatt - India
Dara Ikejani - Ghana
Jean-Baptiste Meunier - Brazil

Musicians
India
Saurabh Kadekodi
Lakshmi Madhavan
Rajeev Mukundan

Ghana
Keith Boone
Yamoussa Camara
Christian Clark
Kara Kloss
Dara Ikejani

Brazil:
Gabriel Colombo
Jean-Baptiste Meunier
Saturn MIllner
Kryn Sausedo
Mala Shah

Motion Capture
Justin Macey