The Demon's Shadow

THE DEMON'S SHADOW

This is title sequence inspired by the John Wick end credits is by far one of my greatest accomplishments to date. I created this project for my sophomore thesis at Chapman University, and took me one semester to finish. The idea was to create a mock-up title sequence for a fictional TV show placed in Japan. I also drew inspiration from the Arcane opening credits, recreating the film damage and tearing effect inside of DaVinci Resolve. I modeled the entire Katana from scratch, but most of the environments and textures were made from Quixel scans.

Test Renders

Being this was one of my first times rendering in Maya, I had to complete a variety of different test renders until I locked in proper lighting. I found that rendering out medium resolution images with low sample counts would give me quick test results. In the end I opted to go with a darker, more back-lit environment to fit the mood.

Fantasy Composites 

Another one of my favorite projects was my personal Photoshop composites! The majority of these were personal projects, and they gave me invaluable experience on how to composite different elements into one coherent piece. Creating stylized two-tone lighting is defiantly one of my guilty pleasures. I often photograph with white lighting, and then paint in colors afterwards for a dreamy appeal.

3D Assets

One of the most important tools of a motion graphics designer is 3D assets! Here are a collection of my favorite 3D assets and renders! Almost all assets are designed in Autodesk Maya and textured in Substance Painter. Although I'm no video game artist, I always strive to keep my assets as optimized as possible to make render times and animation as efficient as possible.

Conclusion

I want to thank you for viewing my work, and I hope you found in interesting! I wasn't sure if I was ready to submit to the Rookies this year, but I want to thank everyone, including the Rookies website, for pushing me to put my work out there. This has been a long and amazing journey, and it's amazing when I truly look back an realize how far I've come. Thank you for your time and support.

- Jesse Van Norman