Mo'kai Character Sheet and Still Frame

The final character sheet offers a comparison between the original concept art and the 3D model.. Below is one of my favorite frames from the film. 

Mo'kai is running a time trial through an obstacle course as a right of passage. The film opens on him navigating the final stretch of a high-tech pipe gorge.  After nearly missing his leap over a deep chasm, he crosses the finish line and struts away victorious.

While the story is short and simple, this project was mostly about pulling off an entire film by myself. Character design, world building, and design documents were prepared ahead of time from a loose prompt. Then the remaining visual development, modeling, textures, rigging, animation, rendering and compositing were crammed into a single 14-week semester. Most of the work was done in 3DS Max, textures created in Photoshop, and compositing done with After Effects.

Art Deco Box Office

This is a paint-over of the low-poly Maya model to explore color, texture, mood, and lighting.

Why I chose this scene:

1. I love art deco. 

2. With another mild Seattle winter looming large in real life, I wanted to create a space where someone could hide out from the bitter cold of a real Midwestern winter while watching the pageant of snowflakes outside.

3. I wrote a character once who lived in 1930's Iowa and dreamed of being a Hollywood starlet. This space is for her. 

After several more iterations, here's how the final render came out.