Berkeley Braun Animations

Hi and welcome to my 3D Animation Projects! I'm Berkeley, I'm a 3D Generalist with an emphasis in Animation. I enjoy telling stories with the personality and movements of the characters I work with. My favorite subject to animate are all types of animals and creatures.

My favorite element of this industry is that there is no shortage of new learning opportunities and problems that need to be solved. I enjoy figuring out new programs, techniques, and seeing my own improvements overtime.

Discovery

This project was a piece I worked on with Bavly Hanna. I call this piece Discovery because it illustrates a story of a cyborg and his robot dog companion finding a crashed airship in the snow.
I enjoyed working on this project with another talented artist and seeing our different strong suits come together to create something truly beautiful. Bavly and I collaborated on the concept, composition, and story. We combined existing assets we each made into one consecutive scene. 
I was responsible for all of the animation, and for the creation and rig of the quadruped robot dog. This robot dog is based on concept art by Sean McNally. I modeled, rigged, and animated in Maya.

This was a texture test I did for one of my Texturing classes at Gnomon using the same model. The model was then updated and rigged for the purposes of the Discovery piece.

Bavly was responsible for the two ship models and buoy, along with the robot texturing in this scene, Gaea terrain, and compositing. This project was done with Maya, Gaea, Substance Painter, and Nuke. Bavly's models are based off of Ian McQue's artwork.

I created a simple rig in Maya for the Robot Dog, along with animating the Polis Bot rig which was created by Kiel Figgins. I animated both characters to fit the scene according to the Gaea terrain Bavly created.

I used a lot of reference from people walking in the snow, walking against wind, robot walk cycles, along with deer, dogs, and horses to keep believability in this animation.

This is the final project which won Gnomon's Best of Term Summer 2022 Competition for "Best Scene Animation." 

Monster Fight

This project was the most enjoyable to animate of the projects I have worked on so far. I enjoyed the freedom I had with animating the creature's heavy shapes and poses. I enjoyed the secondary action these creatures display and the fast paced battle of the whole scene.

I'm responsible for the concept, animation, some textures, and environment creation.

Animation was done in Maya and the scene, lighting, and camera were done using Unreal Engine. The small monster's textures are done in Substance Painter, and the landscape is made in Gaea.

The Blurgha Rig (large monster) is by Perry Leijten, and the Monster Rig (smaller creature) is by Mano Anim.

Traveler Tales

This animation is a fun playful fantasy scene where three characters are interacting. It features a bartender who is asking travelers about their adventures. A talking cat and her elf companion are both telling their sides of the story about the time they slayed a dragon.

I am responsible for the story concept, animation, and the lighting. I used Maya, Adobe Photoshop, and Vray.

I came up with the concept for this piece based on rigs I had access to: Kaju rig by Game Animation Academy and Seraphim Nantiphat. Azri Rig by Jonathan Cooper, Sol Brennan, and Matthew Bachnick. And Ninja Rig by Colossus.

I also came up with the dialogue and gave the script to Christine Schumacher and Mark Eaton for the voice acting. 

Special thanks to Eric White for the bar scene which was based on concept art by Daniel Thomas. Concept featured on the left, and Eric's 3D scene on the right.

Surprise Gift

Surprise! Kayla gets a puppy for her birthday!

This animation was a fun one to create. It was challenging but fun to animate movements of a younger character compared to my other projects. Finding the balance between shy, excited, surprised, and happy all contained in a 10 year old character was a fun problem to solve.

I enjoyed animating the interaction between the girl and the puppy. I wanted to make the dog a bundle of excitement, and have the girl be more shocked, therefore having smaller but still quick movements.

I am responsible for the concept, animation, and lighting. All made possible with Maya. The Kayla Rig is by Josh Sobel, the Jacko Rig is by Micah B, and the scene props are by MZP Studios.

Special thanks to Christine Schumacher for the voice acting!

Thank you for tuning into the work that I poured so much into! I hope you enjoyed viewing these projects as much as I did creating them! And I can't wait to continue this art journey going forward.