The Shipwreck House

This was one of the last Render project of the year.

The goal was to choose a character among a whole group of them that were given to us, all with different styles, looks and personnalities. We then had to analyse them and try to give to them a story, a personnality and with those elements, build them a hut which would correspond to their traits and artstyle. 

Mine was a giant, square-shaped, mischievous and disabled pirate. 

THE PRE-PRODUCTION

The work started in illustration class in tandem with scenario class where we had to design a story for our character.
I decided to write that he was an old and retired ship captain of our time (some elements of its design, even if it featured some stereotypical pirate traits, seemed to also feature a bit of modern sailor clothes). After a big accident, he lost his leg and his ship sunk in the sea... He lost his job but decided to have a bit of fun when he found the remains of a wrecked ship not to far of a beach. Installing himself high in a cliff, overlooking the beach, he took a really long time to clumsily build a hut and make it look like an actual pirate ship. Once "finished", he actually considered it as his vacation home where he would come for a few days with his bird when he was bored. And sometimes, he would entierely commit to its pirate role by sneaking on the tourist and stealing some of their stuffs. 

The work properly began with illustration class where we had to design a rough idea of what our hut was going to look like, then evolve it into a more concrete idea.

The main idea I had was to make it look like a pirate ship (y'know... Because pirate) and make it look clumsily built because the character was disabled (he had to build it all by himself)

We then had to design props linked to the character that we had to include in the scene. (with one of them being colored)

LIST OF PROPS: Sunflower seed for his bird, Buoy, an Umbrella stolen to a tourist, Pirate books, Old pirate sword found in the wrecked ship, Cannon from the wrecked ship, Axe, Lantern, Trunk where he keeps things he stole to tourists, Stove and canned food, Telescope and Shovel.

We then had to make the colored concept. Which included the final colored shot as well as some ambiance tests. 

Once the proper ambiance and the good composition choosed, we were good to go. 

THE PRODUCTION

Now we could enter in the next step which was done with our Render and Compositing class. The goal was to create a short video establishing our hut with three main shots (one of them being a close-up of a prop in particular). The character we choosed must not appear in the scene.

The whole 3d modeling and texturing phase, like the Pre-production, lasted of more than a month. To complement our shots, we had to include some animations to give it life. 

With our batch finished, we could complete the project with a bit of compositing. 
So I added a skybox with stylised cloud as well as some effect like the sun light in the title card and adding a stock shot of sand blowing in the second shot. I just had to put the shots together, completing it with some sound design. And with that, here is the final result. 

SELF-CRITIQUE

There are a lot of things that I find wrong with this project. Looking back on it, I think it's fine but I considered to not upload it for a long time because of how bad I thougt it was. Now I have come around it and I hope listing the things I don't like will help me for future projects.

The first thing I strongly dislike about the final render is the sky incrustation. It is just completely off with the clouds and the plane trail moving so unnaturally. We learnt about the tracker node in Nuke after I did the render batch, so I had to animate them manually and it looks horrible >M<
I wish I could have polished the look of the cliff rocks. They look very inconsistent in therm of sharpness and it is just too obvious that they are 3d software polygons just modified a bit (also, some of the UVs are not well made.)
The bump on the stove is a bit too strong in my opinion. I wanted something rusty, but it looks a little bit too exagerated to me. 
The final shot, I find really distracting in its composition, and the beach part is extremely weird. I think I wanted to expand on it towards the end of the project, but it was a bit to late. And now, looking at it, it just looks uncanny with all those umbrellas and absolutely no one (even tho we shouldn't had included any humanoid in the scene.) and that's not the feeling I wanted.
Still in the final shot, I just noticed how the ground texture (on the left) is really weird.
And as my teacher pointed out, still in the last shot, the sand which seems to flow from the top of the cliff towards the ground and just seems to stay in place... is not something that exists X).

One last regret I have is that I animated the swirl of the sea, making it kind of go up and getting a bit on the beach, but the final render doesn't show it because a huge bump is placed just before the place where the water touches the sand. Wish I had more time to at least make it visible. 

Modeling, Texturing and Rendering done with: Maya/Renderman.
Compositing done with: Foundry Nuke.
Video and Sound editing done with: Adobe Premiere.