Ornaments started out as a simple Christmas tree! I modeled it for fun during winter break of my junior year at Cornell, using the tree in our living room as a visual reference. After much trial-and-error, I wound up with a decent looking tree that rendered quickly on my Pentium 200.

After all that work, I figured I should probably do something with the model I'd just made. I sat down and sketched out a short script about a tree ornament who comes alive and tries to get at Santa's milk & cookies. The whole thing came to about two pages and took me 10 minutes to write.

What followed was much more time-consuming. I began to draw a lot of concept sketches and storyboards to define the environment and the action. I chose to set the story in a perfectly typical living room with a decidedly quaint feel. By the time I had gotten this far, winter break was over and I headed back to school.

At the end of junior year, I started the summer by immediately diving back into the project. I built a new computer just for Ornaments, with faster processors and more ram. I also spent a lot of time choosing the background music, which I wanted to mesh perfectly with the action.

Once I knew what 3D models I needed to make, I set out to a local furniture store with a camera and notepad. I took pictures of all the couches and tables that might have made a good match for my animation, and surprisingly, none of the salespeople interfered! A few fellow shoppers even told me it was a great idea to bring a camera ;)

Since I was trying to create an environment that was timeless and warm, I did a bit of research in antique stores as well. Once I had picked my favorite lamps, couches, and tables from the stack of photos, I went back to the stores and took careful measurements with a tape measure. When a saleslady asked what I was doing, I told her that I worked for an "Interior design previsualization firm" and that I would try to sell her furniture products to clients through computer renderings. Before I left the store, she had given me a whole stack of catalogs to bring home!

Thus began about a month and a half of modeling couches, tables, a piano, and everything else that appears in the animation. I chose to do everything myself instead of downloading or buying pre-made objects. I was even able to stick a few pictures of my family onto the walls of my "virtual" living room.

After the props were placed, I set up the lighting scheme. Although you only see two lamps in the room, I had to place over 20 lights in software to get an acceptable image. The tree had its own set of lights, and I also added extra lights for subtle effects like moonlight through the window.

With the scene set, I started animating. This is the process of setting keys to make the character, camera and props move in harmony. This was the most time-consuming part, and it took me the rest of that summer, winter break of senior year, and six months following graduation to finish.

After graduating in May of 2000, I took a 9-5 job in New York City and spent all my free time completing the project. By November the principal animation was done, and it was time for editing. Since I had carefully timed the action and music all along using low-resolution copies of the video, all that remained was to add sound effects, render, and do some minor tweaking. While I was at work during the day and asleep at night, my computer was rendering all the frames of video, a process which took about twelve days.

With the completed video in hand, I went to a local output bureau and had VHS cassettes made. Finally, Ornaments was ready to be submitted to film festivals around the world!