Thanks for the interest! There were three weeks of production. Before the first week, I did about a weeks worth of research on how to properly manage animation production as well as prepare the things needed. I prepared a storyboard, timing and shot sheet, that described the shots and gives a general timing of each shot. I broke it down to about 24 shots.

First week: Animation assets

The biggest hurdle with crackpot was that it required a gigantic amount of custom content. The biggest being the 3 tf2 babies. Everything else that needed to be made were a severed leg, the pyroland pot, and an HQ version of the grisly gumbo. For this, we had a dedicated modeler, a dedicated texturer, and a dedicated rigger. This was completed in the first 5-7 days and made the first stage deadline in time.

Second week: Pyroland creation/animation

Now that the animation assets were completed, the animation process can begin. A major part about why there were a lot of people involved is that I didn't want to pressure the animators. At that point, we only had 2 weeks left, and I set a 1 weeks deadline for all the animation shots to be done, so that post work such as lighting and music can be done properly. I would prefer to have more animators who can comfortably work on a few shots with good quality, rather than a few animators who are Pressured to do many shots and get burned out. So we needed about 7 animators to achieve that.

While this is happening, the map making begins. We have a concept artist come in and make a general concept based on the art of Laura Dubuk (meet the pyro bg artist). Our modeler took charge of designing the Pyroland environment based on that art. He set up the 'cards' for the background as well as the 3d ground and Props (also got an additional guy for props) as well as the skybox. The environment was split into 3 areas, a path, a hilly area, and a cliff that is next to an ice cream river. The concept artist also helped paintover the pyroland area.

Final week: shot placement/post stuff

So we made the shot deadline in time, and now we have to place a majority of the shots in the Pyroland. We place the shots and then we have the particle effects guy come in and add the custom candy rainbow explosion and all the other required effects. When that's done, the shots are handed over to our camera animation/lighting/sound effects/editor guy and he adds all of those respective things. Finally, the composer comes in and create her custom music to follow the action. Then we combine all that and render! Poof: You've crafted Crackpot all of which needed 18 people :P

Here's our team's called Crackpot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFqJjs09CeM

It was made by 18 people in 2 weeks and 6 days.

TF2 babies, pyroland map/props, particle effects, music, all custom made for the video. Expect a release of the TF2 babies and Pyroland 'map'/props soon for the community to play with!

If you like it tell your friends, and you can also vote for it here:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=195399636