Better Together
An experiment gone wrong splits Mona the Octocat into her component parts. It's up to her robot assistant, Hubot, to put her back together again…
Process
This animation broke new ground for the team and brand. An expanded budget enabled us to include elements like 3D animation and professional voice talent. Specifically, partnering with Wabi Sabi for a custom music score gave us so much more narrative control. The storytelling possibilities open up when you’re not bound by stock music. Here’s the step-by-step…
Story
In 2017, GitHub decided it was time to refresh the Hubot product and branding. That year the Art team produced a variety of Hubot-related assets to support the campaign - Hubot stickers, a figurine, updated site graphics and this animated short.
Our goal was always to align Mona and Hubot’s character story with the product’s, 2 different stories essentially running in parallel - octocats represent developers and bots are dev helpers. Both stories are bound together by our company values, terminology and our octicon library.
This particular story is centered around our trusty robot sidekick. His prime directive is to support and protect his dev Mona, which is put to the test when Mona’s experiment goes awry forking her into an octopus and cat.
Boards and Color
After the story is laid out, the team collectively produced storyboards and animatics.
Once they’re locked down João Ribeiro worked his color magic and produced our color script. You can see the visual tone represented frame-by-frame.
Illustrated by João Ribeiro
Visual Development
Splitting Mona into a cat and octopus required us to answer a handful of development questions - what do the characters, tech, and lab look like? We had to create that world. Our talented artists Gracie Cole and João Ribeiro went to work on these questions. These were some of the viz dev winners.
Illustrated by Gracie Cole
Illustrated by João Ribeiro
Illustrated by Grace Cole
Illustrated by João Ribeiro
Animation
We split the animation mediums up based on character traits - hard surface models utilized 3D animation, white soft organic characters were animated in 2D. This drew an important contrast between the characters, while consistent rendering techniques planted them in the same space. You can see our 2D process from thumbnail to final.
Our team of animators, Haley Carroll, Cameron Foxly and myself, worked in a couple of different styles to help sell the tone of the intro commercial and transition to the main section of the short.
Animated by Tony Jaramillo
Animated by Cameron Foxly
Illustrated by João Ribeiro
Backgrounds
Without them its “Duck Amuck”. Our visual development was lead by João Ribeiro with our junior artist Grace Cole. The two of them thumbnailed, illustrated and colored every background in the short. They were integral in developing Mona’s world and how she would interact within it.
Animation by Cameron Foxly
Composite/sfx
The final visual elements of the process are special effects and compositing, which was lead by our talented artist Cameron Foxly. This stage adds all that visual icing that helps to sell the story and that world’s reality.
The Results
This short was special for 2 main reasons - quality and story. The high quality of the production is rare in our space and our artists delivered. Innovation and creativity were at peak level during production. That said, the world-building and story foundation were equally important. Mona’s universe grew with this one and opened the possibilities of what could be.
My Role
Director
Writer
Storyboard Artist
Animator