Lighting Demo Reel- Ash Brock

Hello! My name is Ash Brock and I am a lighting artist. I am a recent graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design with a BFA in Visual Effects. Here is a collection and breakdown of the best work from my years at SCAD displaying both what I learned and the skills I have developed.  

Below I have some of my projects detailed for anyone to view!

The Last Dungeon

Description

Several of my shots come from my final project at SCAD "The Last Dungeon". This was an Unreal film produced by SCAD's in-house studio, SCAD Animation Studios, where I was VFX Supervisor and oversaw the post-production pipeline. We were especially challenged by this film since it was a film done in Unreal, which is relatively new to the film industry. Throughout the process, we learned an entirely new software [Unreal Engine], troubleshot on our own and developed our own pipeline for dealing with the real-time engine.

My Tasks:

- Lighting

- Lighting Research and Development

- Compositing

- VFX Supervision

-Texturing (The Wizard)

For this project, we utilized Nuke for compositing. Our goal was an 80s anamorphic lens look, so in nuke, we applied lens distortion, bloom, chromatic aberration, and film grain to achieve the desired look.

Here is a video detailing the process of the post-production of TLD.

Buddy in the Sun

This project marked the first time I tried to sculpt a character! This was quite the challenge, but it taught me so much about sculpting, the importance of good topology, and uving! I love this little fellow and I hope you do too!

Task:

- Modeling

- Surfacing

- Layout

- Lighting

Challenges:

This was my first time trying out sculpting in Nomad Sculpt (or any sculpting program for that matter) and I had no idea where to start. Retopogizing was a task that I didn't expect to be as difficult as it was for me. After 4 retopology attempts, I finally got the hang of it! Luckily with the help of my character friends, I was able to make this little creature come to life.

The Pope's Dog

"The Pope's Dog" is a SCAD Animation Studios production that set out to achieve volumetric lighting on 2D drawings, inspired by Netflix's "Klaus".

Challenge:

The biggest challenge was to recreate the volumetric lighting in Nuke. In response, VFX Supervisor Noah Catan built a tool called 'Pantheon' which allowed the lighters to achieve such a look in a realistic time frame.

Tasks:

-Volumetric Lighting in Nuke

Down Below

For my Lighting for Animation final, we were tasked to take everything we learn and create an image. For some reason the idea of doing an underwater scene stuck in my head. So I got to work.

My goal was to capture that ethereal feeling you get after jumping into a body of water; time slows, sounds muffled, and for a brief moment, you are weightless.

Inspiration

In addition to wanting to achieve that ethereal feeling underwater, I wanted to recreate the look of the sunken statues seen here.