John and Mary - Counsellor

John and Mary - Counsellor

During my third year of study, I got the opportunity to work on a short film project called 'John and Mary'!

I was tasked with designing 1 of 4 CGI characters to feature in film, the Counsellor. This was my first big project I worked on and it was challenge, but the team I was in were very helpful and supportive, as this project was simply a passion project at the university to use some of the tech we had just gotten access to!

The film follows John and his personal dilemma of teleporting to Mars to have dinner with his partner, Mary. During the film he seeks advice from the Counsellor on what to do and how the teleportation process works, eventually leading him to follow through with teleporting, except it doesn't quite go to plan..

The team got a lot of free reign with creative control over the look of the film, using The Fifth Element as a main point of reference in terms of character fashion and styling. It was certainly a learning experience for me to keep in mind what the 3D artists would have to do to bring the character to life, so to work closely with them to understand what could and couldn't be done in the time frame of the project was definitely a worthwhile experience.

Design Iterations

Designing the character, the team ended up picking design C as it was going to be the easiest design to recreate in 3D and work in the environment built for the character. 

Colour Passes

For the colour passes, the team chose the blue option as it worked best with the environment colour scheme that was already built.

Final Model Sheet

This was the final model sheet I then passed onto the 3D artist that was modelling the character, featuring material callouts and a turnaround.