Eglefino - Unreal R&D & Look Dev

[The Brief] Eglefino is an animated musical based on Laura Carusino’s book Eglefino, sei speciale!, created as an inclusive story about diversity, belonging and the search for one’s place in the world. The film brings the character of Eglefino from the book to screen, combining a soft children’s storytelling tone with a technically ambitious animation pipeline. The challenge was to support the visual development of a hybrid animated project where paperless 2D animation and high-quality CGI had to coexist inside the same expressive universe. The final look needed to feel coherent, emotional and accessible for a young audience, while still reaching a strong technical standard for broadcast animation. [The Strategy] I collaborated on the project focusing on Unreal Engine R&D and look development. The work was centered on exploring how Unreal could support the visual direction of the film: testing real-time rendering possibilities, lighting behavior, material response, scene atmosphere and the overall translation of the cartoon style into a production-ready CGI language. The R&D process was important because the project required more than standard 3D execution. It needed a visual bridge between a hand-crafted animated sensibility and a real-time / CGI workflow. The look development phase helped define how characters, environments, lighting and materials could preserve the warmth and charm of the original story while benefiting from a more advanced 3D pipeline. The goal was to make the technical layer invisible: using Unreal and CGI research to reinforce the emotional tone of the film, not overpower it. [The Outcome] Eglefino became a 33-minute animated film available on RaiPlay and broadcast on Rai Yoyo, produced by Enanimation in collaboration with Rai Kids. The production involved a large Italian animation team and combined 2D paperless animation with advanced CGI, positioning the project as a technically relevant animated special for children and families. My contribution to Unreal R&D and look development was part of the visual experimentation behind the project, helping explore how real-time tools and CGI workflows could support a warm, musical and inclusive cartoon world.