The Disappearing Act
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The Disappearing Act is an upcoming NSFW 18+ animated short film featuring NeonWabbit characters Sunny and Voltereier. Voice work was commissioned by Studio RGB-Newt's Team Lewd the Newt, and it was directed, written, drawn, animated, edited, composited, sound designed, score composed, and produced by NeonWabbit, who also did the cinematography and special effects work to integrate the hand-drawn 2D animation into the 3D Unreal Engine-powered environments (sourced from artists on the UE Marketplace, which is now known as Fab).
| The Disappearing Act | |
|---|---|
| File:Screenshot The Disappearing Act.png | |
| Directed by | NeonWabbit |
| Written by | NeonWabbit |
| Based on | the characters Sunny and Voltereier, owned by NeonWabbit |
| Produced by | |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | NeonWabbit |
| Edited by | NeonWabbit |
| Music by | NeonWabbit |
| Animation by | NeonWabbit |
| Layouts by | NeonWabbit |
| Color process | Digital |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | The Fishal Project |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
It is tentatively set to star Nami955 as Sunny (and Janice, a squirrel janitor), plus Shay-Ki AD as Voltereier.
The project's production code is NW-M24LTN01, and its working title is Project Kitty Bnuuy [sic].
Plot
Cast
- Nami955 as Sunny, Janice the Janitor
- Shay-Ki AD as Voltereier
Additionally, Watcha appears as an audience member who is not voiced.
Production
Early development
Plans to ship the characters of Voltereier and Sunny together were only put into motion after Voltereier was written as a stage magician, immediately after the acquisition of the character from their previous owner. They needed a "bunny" assistant of a similar physical build and size, to "pull out their hat", and Sunny was the only current bunny-eared character in NeonWabbit's roster which ticked all the boxes, even though they were mostly a winged fox. By mid-2023, artist BATRUSE was commissioned to be the first to depict the characters in an NSFW pose and setting[1].
Casting
Nami955 and Shay-Ki AD, who Toxis originally cast as Aurora Australis and Gerald Symons on his commissioned The Aussie Goldmine-related NSFW 18+ animation, Refill, were picked to voice Sunny and Voltereier for this project due to their great previous work on the aforementioned short, and because NeonWabbit promised to commission them at some point during August 2024.
Two additional characters were created specifically for this animation. The spectator character, Watcha, was chosen to remain silent, and the voice role of the janitor character, Janice, also went to Nami955.
Writing
Because of the promise NeonWabbit made to commission Nami955 and Shay-Ki by the end of August 2024, the script was written very last minute within that month and completed within a single night, being delivered on the first day of September.
Due to the rush job, the final draft of the screenplay contains a few mistakes, such as erroneously having a line where it says that Voltereier interacts with Zaps, instead of with Sunny, as it should. "Zaps" is Voltereier's nickname.
Voice recording
Nami955 recorded all her lines within a day of receiving the screenplay, delivering them on September 2, 2024. Shay-Ki's lines were delivered on September 15, and after some "dead air" (a.k.a. places in the audio where no characters are making any noise) was detected after editing the voices together, a second session of additional lines from Nami955 was completed in two days, and delivered on September 19.
Planning
Each sentence of the screenplay was given its own shot, totalling 82 shots in total, including the credits. Once the animation was timed, the final count of frames to be rendered came out to be 8118, excluding the opening idents and logos.
A character turnaround of Sunny in a newly-designed anthro form was produced, as well as a size comparison graphic with Voltereier in a t-pose, as Sunny's original feral design was thought not to be a good match for this specific production. A screenshot edited from this, of just the two characters standing side-by-side in their front views, was posted to plapp.ing's Bluesky profile[2] in late-September 2024.
Thumbnail sketches for each shot were drawn on a tiny canvas with a mouse and a pixel art brush, and these formed the basis of the more detailed storyboard frames.
Sound design and music
Upon receival of the recorded voice lines from each VA, the best takes were chosen and timed with their respective shots in the timeline of the DaVinci Resolve Studio project. Sound effects, sourced from artists such as Dreamertooth and Zonkpunch, purchased audio libraries, the OpenNSFW Sound Pack, and Freesound.org (all public domain/Creative Commons 0-licensed) were then also timed into the shots, after the voices.
Temp classical music tracks were put together next, to further accompany the voice acting and SFX, and these later evolved into the final score, heavily featuring pianos and string instruments, as this orchestral sound fit the theatre setting where the action takes place. The music track "Put Down Your Pickaxe" (from The Aussie Goldmine) was included in the short as something Janice hums to, but it was decided not to include this on the film's soundtrack, The Disappearing OST, as it already had its own release as a single in 2023.
Storyboards and animatic
To produce the storyboards (and likewise the animatic), rudimentary camera work for each of the 82 shots got done in the final 3D scene in Unreal Engine 5.5, based on the earlier thumbnail sketches, so that the characters could now be drawn on top of screenshots of each rendered shot in more detail, and with the correct perspective.
At some point during the rendering of the entire sequence, to source screenshots to be used for the storyboard, a technical glitch occurred where the thumbnail sketches appeared to be floating in mid-air in the final render, and more hilariously, the animated curtains would be stuck on a loop of repeatedly opening and closing throughout all 8118 frames, when they are only supposed to close and reopen just once, around the beginning of the short.
Animation and layout
Editing
Release
Reception
Audience viewership
Critical response
Legacy
Soundtrack
Five original score tracks from the short film, excluding the snippet of "Put Down Your Pickaxe" that Janice listens to on her headphones, are to appear on the soundtrack album The Disappearing OST: Music and Score from The Disappearing Act, by Neon and the Argie Bees.
Documentary
An episode of the mini-documentary video series Behind the Plapping is to be dedicated to the behind the scenes of The Disappearing Act, specifically featuring details on the background of Team Lewd the Newt, a step-by-step process showing how the short film was made (including the composition of its soundtrack), and a look at upcoming NSFW 18+ projects such as The Aussie Goldmine: Explicit Edition, Flye 'n' Frie's Firsts, and a musical called The Town of Surryfex.
See also
- Refill, another NSFW 18+ short film, also starring Nami955 and Shay-Ki AD, based on The Aussie Goldmine franchise