2023 Image work

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 storytelling. I particularly enjoy working on art direction and incorporating strong visuals into a 3D realm.

Showreel 2023

Fisher, a very short film

A tuna is looking for his fish soulmate on a dating app

This 30-second commercial parody short film was created in 2023 within one month, from initial ideas to the final movie.

It was co-directed by Juliette Berthe, Amélie Soto, Marie Fantini, Sarah Levacher-Robinet, and myself, Lou Thoby.

I worked, during pre-production, on the colorboard and background concepts, and, during production, on the shading, lighting and compositing of the film.

We used Maya, Arnold, Nuke, Zbrush, Substance Designer and Marvelous Designer. Most of the shading was done procedurally in Maya's Hypershade.

Colorboard of the film, with a focus on mood and color changes. 

Shading Close-up in pose of Océane

Compositing breakdown

The Mouse and the Sacred Cat

Character Art School Exercise. We had to translate a character design from the Artstation's challenge "Untamed : When Animals Ruled the World" into 3D. Being passionate about 2D/3D rendering, I chose Olga Kai's concept, "The Mouse and the Sacred Cat.

I used Maya, Arnold and Nuke for this project.

Left : Original concept by Olga Kai. Right : 3D version.

My goal was to work on the Arnold's nodal shading system in Maya and the AiToon Shader, n order to faithfully translate the 2D style and make it work from multiple angles, not just the original concept one.

I also altered the normals in the eyes to get a crescent shape for the highlight.

Pinocchio ver. death

Character Art School Exercise, where we were tasked with designing and creating a fairy-tale monster.

Here is my rendition of a horrified, not completely transformed Pinocchio. I aimed to make it as tragic as possible by inventing a new scene as horrifying as the events in the original story.

I was responsible for all aspects, from initial ideas to the final composited image.

The purpose of this exercise was to learn a variety of new software at the beginning of the school year. It was my first project using Maya, Arnold, Yeti, and Marvelous Designer. I also utilized Zbrush and Nuke.

Concept created for this project. Initially, I had the intention of making it in black and white, but during the 3D process, I discovered that the colored version worked better.

From left to right : lighting / rendering  / final compositing

The shading was done procedurally using Arnold in Maya's Hypershade. The floor is a megascan shader asset.

Eris

A 10-second school exercise completed in 2 weeks, inspired by Eris from 'Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas'.

Collaborated with Marie-Lys Mathias, Maria Minaeva, and Célia Rouchet.

My primary contributions included props modeling, shading, and compositing. Our main objective was to emphasize the FX and FX shaders, as this was our first experience incorporating them into a 3D animated sequence.

Above : Render / Mid-comp / Final compositing

Thank you !