Tigress shot AND animated short film "Across the Bridge"

This is an animation piece I did at Griffin Animation Academy! For this project, I wanted to show a tiger having some fun, and the power and grace behind it's movements.

Rig used: Kiel Figgins' Sabertooth Tiger

Muscle jiggle script: Truong CG Artist

Lookdev and fur are still in progress :) All textures and fur are all being created from scratch. Here are some in progress renders of the fur and environment, including a test comp of the renders.

Here is the shot breakdown. The course at Griffin Animation Academy is 15 weeks long, packed with great feedback every week! Starting with a 2D animatic, I moved to stepped blocking in Maya, then splining and cleaning up. Although some movements changed throughout the process, the big idea stayed the same, and I think it really improved a lot from start to finish!

Here is the compilation of all the references I used to make this shot. I fist started with an idea that I drew in 2D as an animatic. I then found references of tigers/big cats doing these movements, and edited them together to make a cohesive shot. Every time I wanted to add a new motion, I looked for a new piece of reference, and that's how I was able to collect so many!

ACROSS THE BRIDGE Short Film

This is a 2D and 3D animated short film Goody (Chao) Wu and I made at Emily Carr University. The film is about two siblings who grew apart, but bond again through a video game, bridging the gap in their relationship!

Goody and I feel lucky to have found each other, because we have exact opposite passions within production, while Goody specializes in modelling, texturing and grooming, also working on rigging, lighting and rendering, I was able to show myself with the character and environment designs, layout and animation (both 2D and 3D).

Some of the post production is still work in progress.

These are the 3D characters created from scratch by Goody and me for this short film. 

RED PANDA. Representing the main character int he game world, we wanted him to be cute and cuddly, and we couldn't think of a better animal than a red panda! They also fit so well to our Asia theme. Making the pupils bit, with round cheeks and a round shape gives him a cute plush feel.

For all characters, modelling was done in ZBrush and Maya, the fur/hair is made using yeti, cloth in Marvellous Designer, textured in Mari and Substance Painter, rendered with Arnold.

GATEKEEPER. Representing the barrier between the two siblings, we wanted the gatekeeper to be menacing and extremely powerful. We took inspiration from bulls and oxen, which are very powerful animals. As this bridge and temple belongs to the gatekeeper, you can see design elements such as horns in the environment designs as well! (images below :) )

SHEEP WARRIOR. Representing the sister character in the game world, we wanted the warrior to look strong and shielded. We wanted to emphasis the heavy armor she wears into battle, to defeat any opponent she comes across!

2D CHARACTERS. Here are the 2D character turntables I made for a 360 view. I also designed these characters for the film. Unfortunately the dad character did not play a big role int he film, so we decided to cut all his scenes~

All 2D backgrounds were painted in Photoshop, and animation was done in Toon Boom Harmony.

Shot progress can be seen on our Youtube page:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwBJCLYUgQf9brGNiU6tWTQ/videos

3D ENVIRNMENT DESIGNS. Being from and partially from Asia, Goody and I really wanted to incorporate these elements into our short film. In the 3D environment and characters a lot of elements are inspired by east Asia, such as the armor, architecture, and creatures.

FUR AND HAIR. We used Yeti to simulate the fur/hair on our characters. We used texture maps to drive the color of the fur/hair.

CLOTH. We made and simulated the clothing on our characters in Marvellous Designer.

TEXTURE. For skin texture we used Mari. For other textures we also used Substance Painter.