VFX Animation Showreel - Zoe Walker

VFX Animation Showreel

Creature Animation - End of the Line (Short Film)

Over the past five months, I have been Producer for the short film 'End of the Line'. I also worked as an Animator for this film and was responsible for keyframe animation on the monster as well as motion capture clean up on the metahumans.

Although this was my first time using motion capture, I feel I quickly got the hang of the process. I learnt how beneficial animation layers in Maya can be.

As an Animator, I was also responsible for developing the animation style of the monster. I used references such as the Xenomorph from the Alien franchise and demogorgons from Stranger Things to create basic animation cycles and actions that could be easily implemented into our film.

I made sure to ask for feedback on my animation whenever I made major changes. During the polishing stage, I received some extremely helpful feedback from one of my industry connections. This feedback encouraged me to strengthen the main poses in each shot as well as improve the arcs in the overall movement.

VFX Animation - Tech Troubles (Short Film)

I had lots of fun working on the short film 'Tech Troubles' as an Assistant Producer and Animator. Prior to this film, which was created in the second half of 2022, I hadn't animated using backplates before, so I found it interesting learning about the VFX pipeline and how CG is integrated with live-action footage.

Creature/VFX Animation - Lux Mediae Noctis (Trailer)

More recently, I animated for 'Lux Mediae Noctis', an external group project. My work involved animating the butterfly in all three shots as well as producing a variety of animation cycles for the crowd simulation in Shot 3.

Although this project involved quite a CG heavy environment, I still had to be aware of how my animation would look against the live-action footage provided. I spent lots of time experimenting with speed and motion paths, and paid close attention to how the movement would look in relation to the moving camera.

I carried out several rig tests towards the beginning of production and created the animation cycles, which were then passed on to the Crowd Artist to begin testing the simulation.

If I had more time to work on this project and/or the swarm of butterflies were seen in much more detail, I would have liked to have added more of an overlapping action on the butterfly's wings in each cycle.

VFX/Creature Animation Showreel

Here you can watch my 3D Animation showreel, which involves animations from both individual projects and short films I have worked on over the past two years.

I'm extremely proud of how much I achieved and I'm excited to continue developing my skills and producing more realistic and aesthetically pleasing animation in future!