MICROCOSMOS - Vedel Isciane

— Microcosmos 

Microsomos is a project carried out this year as part of the ESMA school curriculum.  It took about five months to complete - from the initial concept drawings to the composited animation clip. The goal was to design a non-existing insect and have it evolve in a realistic environment. My creature is called the "Palus Vesparum", the swamp wasp, and lives in South Asian tropical swamps. 

Today, I'm delighted to be able to share with you the stages of my work and the full breakdown of this project. 

First, let me take you through the stages of the process.

— Concept & Drawings

The first step was to create the creature. After some research on paper, I settled on a species of wasp that borrows some attributes from dragonflies.

The Palus Vesparum is thus characterized by its developed abdomen, its long stinger and the particular patterns covering its body. Although it is dressed in the distinctive yellow of its fellows, the turquoise blue that it also wears is very singular.

— 3D model

The second step consisted in modeling, sculpting and shading the insect.

The software used are Maya, Renderman, ZBrush and Photoshop. 

— The Environment 

For the third step, I focused on the environment of the scene: a tropical swamp. I started with research in drawing, then I moved on to 3D realization.

— The lighting 

I wanted to create a lighting at the end of the day, during a sunset. Here are the raw lighting without textures and the raw lighting with textures. 

— The animation

The penultimate step was not the least important: animating the bug. A rigging step was necessary before that, concerning the insect and the flower on which it lands. I wanted to make it interact with its environment in order to make it more credible. 

— Compositing

Compositing the insect was the last step of this project. 

To conclude this presentation, you can take a look at the breakdown video of this project.

Thank you for reading this far !