Amanda Mai - Junior Year Work

Push Pull

Our star of the show is this giant crustacean dude who goes by the nickname "Maddy". He's a 7'10 European lobster that speaks (yes, he can speak) with a northern British accent, but of course no one would ever know any of that from this project alone. He seems to really not be a fan of the metal box that he finds himself encased in.

Above are his model sheets and 3D painting I created to help represent his look in 3D. 

Speaking of which, here's his model (rigged with Advanced Skeleton)! Textured, un-textured, and in wire-framed. (Full disclosure the wire frame has a cat clark subdivision on, I just forgot to turn it off).

Modeled in Zbrush and re-topoed in maya, this was definitely the most ambitious character I've created to date. All of his shell detail (creases between the plating, spikes, etc) was done with displacement detailing in Zbrush that was later projected onto the re-topoed mesh. And yes, that long blonde flowing hair is X-gen that's animated with dynamics (the movement of which you'll get to witness later). If you couldn't tell, it's an indulgence of mine to create a pretty/cool/cute looking creature with a nice palette, though some are not easily convinced by such ideas. 

Here's where we get into the real action. This is the final animatic of my "Push Pull", and was one of three ideas that I pitched to my instructor for the story of the assignment. All were planned to be cinematic, but I ultimately chose this one because it had the most understandable high concept (aside from maybe an ocean floor, an oppressive lab cell seems like an appropriate habitat for him). After my instructor saw the first iteration of this animatic, I think it was the first time I caught a glimpse of him actually feeling truly on board with the whole concept of the character (prior he was mostly screaming at me about how it was a mistake that I chose something so complicated). 

And now we get into animation (the most enjoyable part for me). This is a playblast of final hand-keyed animation. The chains were also rigged with Advanced Skeleton (each link instanced for a nice small file size). I believe this was the first time I discovered how to animate slow-mo (without needing to use premiere). Pro tip to anyone reading this that wants to attempt it: you need to either be in spline or have enough break downs for slow-mo to read, trust me. No one understood the intent until it was pretty much all in spline. 

And here we are, the final iteration, lighting, sound design, hair simming, and all. I did not imagine it would come out this "edgy" but I guess what else was I supposed to expect when your lighting is "dark room with red key light". Either way, I'm pretty content with the mood and the reactions it garners from people. Are there things I could fix? Absolutely (I beg you not to look too hard), but for a "simple body mechanic exercise" I'm so glad I took the opportunity to make something ambitious. It was a great opportunity for me to learn/try out so many things (all of which will help me when working on my senior thesis and beyond). 

Silhouette

The "Silhouette" exercise  was assigned to us at the beginning of the year (mainly to brush off any rusty animation hands as well as practice the importance of a strong silhouette). I've always wanted to do an exaggerated action jump, so I managed to craft a "jewel thief" narrative that suits that, as well as give it a popular ironic ending. (You'll find that a lot of my animations involve me slowly knocking off desires listed on my bucket list).

Rig provided by Zach Grzymala!

Lip-sync

Now moving onto a much different tone, the "Lip-sync" is another exercise that focuses on acting (body and facial), and, of course, Lip-sync. After accomplishing a more cinematic/serious feel, I wanted to try something different (mainly for portfolio reasons, and also for the fact that I wanted to try something hyper cartoony at least once before I graduated). 

Behold, a caricature of yours truly. We were encouraged to create "cartoonified" versions of ourselves for this assignment (though not required), and I figured why not take a stab at it. I was originally against the idea, but after doing some exploration I figured it could be fun to experiment with what I considered to be "me". 

Before we could get into the actual Lip-sync of this Lip-sync assignment, we were required to make an "emo" test which served as an altered version of a rig test. I personally really enjoyed this assignment, and I really wish we were given one of these for our previous character, as it would've been SO helpful to get to know Maddy (and his hair dynamic settings) before his final showing. 

After deciding what my Lip-sync was going to be, I found myself creating a cartoonified version of my real world dog (named Winston as you can see). In the initial pitch, I was told his character design wasn't in harmony with my own, so I of course cranked up the wonkiness of a few of his features to follow suit. 

Here are the renders of both of us living our best lives. Once again sculpted in Zbrush and re-topoed in Maya, it was definitely a challenge to get their eyes to work with the rigging system of Advanced Skeleton, however, with the power of youtube and taking inspiration from other people's methods, I found a way to rig those eyes and all of their SnS-ish glory:

All eye geometry was given that egg shape with a lattice. That lattice was then skinned to joints which were controlled by CTLs. They don't get along with AS very much, but after rebuilding the face rig about 15 times and some rudimentary parent constraining, I finally managed to get a version that could fulfil its needed purpose. Fun fact, both characters share the same eye geometry, just with slightly different shipped lattices. I figured it would drastically cut down on production time (which it certainly did). Enjoy me going ham on some of the controllers/joints. 

Despite the drastically different tone, of course also wanted to try something a little different. I wanted to take advantage of the cartoony nature of both characters, so I wound up going with an elementary school demographic cartoon segment with a brutally ironic twist (as is popular for these bite-sized films). 

Disclaimer: No Winstons were harmed in the making of this project.

Animating in this cartoony style was... surprisingly more complicated than I expected it to be. I suppose it was a matter of having to move almost twice the amount of CTLs in order to get her "rubber hose" limbs to work, as well as needing to push a more "pose to pose" type of look (I myself tend to be more of an "even" person though I understand it can look unsightly). And of course I never got tired of looking at her bald.

And here we are. My final "final" for the year. It was definitely a blast finding ways to enhance the cartoony nature through sound design and graphics and what not. It's also amazing that my class now knows my dog's name. I hope you enjoy the tone in all of its hilarity. 

If you've made it this far down the page, thanks for watching! Feel free to snoop around on my Instagram and website for more of my work!

Here's my LinkedIn should you wish to contact me (or use my email, [email protected]).