Watch the First Animated Short Featuring SL's Raglan Shire Tinies Made from Last Spring's Successful Kickstarter

I wrote about the Raglan Shire Kickstarter last March, which raised funds to bring Second Life's beloved tiny avatars to a real life mass audience, and now via project lead Zayn Till, here's some fruits to that crowdfunder -- presenting "Wootberry Joos!", which is, as Mr. Till explains, "our first complete animated short", specifically, "a mock commercial for a mock product to show that these characters ARE entertaining no matter what situation you throw them in". The results are highly-polished and face-punchingly cute:

Follow the project's Facebook page for updates. As you may have noticed, while these Tiny avatars were first created in Second Life, this short was not shot in SL machinima. Instead, Till tells me, they recreated the Tinies on other platforms to make them more commercial:

"This is real animation like you might see on TV or an animated movie from Pixar or Dreamworks," he says. "All characters were created (once the looks had been fleshed out via sketches) in Maya. Every aspect created from scratch. UV's, hand paintings, skin weights, etc. We hired talented people to then rg the characters, which is adding a complete muscular-skeletal system for each character. The environment which in this instance is the jome, walls, tables, couches, all the things big and small that make the surroundings that the characters inhabit was done in Blender and Maya. Exterior shots are matte paintings. There are many other points that are transparent to the viewer that needed to be done as well.

"Yes," he acknowledges, "it's much more expensive then shooting machinima in a virtual world but you also get something that looks much closer to what you would see on the big screen or television."

Now comes the even harder part -- taking this assets and finding big mainstream entertainment companies to partner with. Wish them well, and read the full update on the Raglan blog here.

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Comments

[Pussycat Catnap]

I know people who would go freaking nuts if they could get that Otter as a mesh tiny furry in SL.

/sigh.

Looks great though. But real tinies spend all day talking about sculpty maps and building stuff. :P

[Cerulean Capalini]

Disagree with the comment. Being a tiny we don't sit around all day & discuss sculpty maps & building stuff. It's way much more then that.

I'm excited to see the concept of the Raglan Shire tiny brought out of SL & being brought into the real world. What was born an idea & brought to a virtual world is being brought to the greater masses. I cannot wait to see more & want to see this come full circle.

[Kim Anubis]

Rock on, Wynx!

[Kate Miranda]

So these are animated cartoons based on SL avatars that were designed based on cartoons?

[Desmond Shang]

That's the great thing about kickstarters, when you see them take off, even if you were the very, very tiniest part of launching it, you feel the thrill of success right along with them.

Go for it, guys! It's great to see people living the dream, and I'm sure far greater success is right around the corner!

[MInaruth]

Hi to all,The first animation is very interesting one.Keep update more things in the blog.I will bookmark your blog for the regular visit.

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[mudpie]

n real tinies not nakies