Lighting, Compositing and a bit of colors

Hi !

I am Lou Thoby, a french 3D animation student at MoPA school, and I'm an artist with a passion for images, especially when it comes to colors, lights, and story-telling.

2022 Showreel

Sang-Froid - Very Short Film

Sang-Froid is a very short film made this year as my major 3rd year project.

It tells the story of Emma, a willful little girl trying to catch a crab.

This short was heavily inspired by my childhood, in Britanny, France.

I tried to focus on designs, colors and shapes. My goal was to use the best of the 2D and 3D mediums combined to bring this movie to life and convey a light-hearted, joyful story.

I started with the idea of the sea, and the concepts of environnements, as I wanted to work heavily on the art direction and full-pictures scenes before leaning into details. My character design comes directly from this idea, and where made at the same time. They needed to be simple but not boring, and to tell who they were at the right second we saw them.

The modelling and texturing of my characters were made accrodingly, as simple and efficient as possible, so they can fit perfectly and be read in a already pretty dense environnement without overloadind it. 

My movie relies mostly on camera-mapping and 2D paintings, enhanced with 3D lighting and compositing. My concepts and paintings were the very basis of the whole project.

(Here : Concept art - Render - Compositing)

Le Lapin et la Renarde -

Greeting card 2022

"Le Lapin et la Renarde" (The Rabbit and The Fox) is about a rabbit coming back home, unsuspecting the danger within. It was directed by Laura Culié, Viviane Sollacaro, Stella Carnazza and Lou Thoby (me)

I was in charge of the pre-production including environnement concepts with Laura, and all aspects of the first scene (not including characters)

Midas - 10 seconds Loop

Made with with Chaos group's Vray Toon, "Midas is bored" is about the mythological king, having to work industrially to change objects to gold. I was responsible of all aspects.

Diorama - Short Film

"Diorama" is a didactic short-film. It was made for Paléo-Energie, a french association that wants to show how forgotten patents can shake the future. Our group theme  was "Hobbies and entertainment".

The film was directed by Viviane Sollacaro, Juliette Berthe, Mahaut de Kerleau, Marie Fantini, Célia Rouchet and Lou Thoby (me)

During the first part of the project, I mainly worked on concept art, especially colors and lights. Thanks to my 10 seconds loop "Midas is bored", I was able to put what I learnt on a whole short made with Vray Toon. I focused the pre-production work on how well it will transcript in 3D.

I was in charge, alongside my teammates, of the modelling and lighting of the rooms. I also made the compositing on the whole short.

She-Hulk - 3D exercise

Super-Hero modelling made with Zbrush, rendered with Vray in 3DSMax, and with a compositing done on Photoshop and Nuke. I made all aspects except rocks.

I wanted to give a "god-like" feeling to the scene, deeply inspired by antiques sculptures. 

Render - Compositing

Cat's Street - Camera Mapping

"Cat's Street" was made entirely with camera-mapping. 

My goal was to work on my 2D/3D skills. I wanted to enhance my digital painting with 3D lighting and compositing, as well as understanding the workflow behind those techniques to, later, use it in a full animated production; which I did a few months later with my short film "Sang-Froid".

It was very important for me to convey a story with a single image. I wanted to play with the surreaslitic feeling of the environnement, and to push the spectator to see the discussion happening between the two cats.

(1) Firstly, I drew the whole line-art to let the drawing convey the shapes I wanted.

(2) After that, I painted a bit of textures and did the color-base to give an atmospheric perspective to the street.

(3) Then, I did the whole mesh, that was only primitives that would only help me to light the scene in 3D. Because of camera-mapping, I didn't have to think about the topology; it's a real time-saver.

(4) I projected my painting on the 3d meshes. I changed my blocks depending on how I wanted the light to hit, or if I wanted give some specific meshes reflection or different materials. My models serve the painting and enhance it. I lit it, and rendered it (Arnold/3dsMax)

(5) I finished the painting by using Nuke in compositing, and using AOVs to specifically change details.

Thank you for reading !