"Above the Clouds" is my 2024 student animated film produced at SCAD.
As director, I contributed to every part of the pipeline and was the sole rigger of our main character, Percy.
I primarily contributed artwork to the film during pre-production and for promotional material - here is a gallery of some of what I produced!
I took on rigging duty for Percy since we did not have an active rigger on the team - I decided to learn rigging and rigged him from scratch over the summer of 2023. The reason I did not use an auto-rigger like Advanced Skeleton is because I wanted to have an in depth understanding of his structure so I could make adjustments more easily!
Final Rig Demo
(Responsible for all animation, layout, character rig and model)
Features Included:
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Space swapping options for IK/FK Arms, IK/FK Legs, IK Pole Vectors, Middle IK Spine, Neck, Head, and Eyes.
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IK/FK swapping for arms and legs.
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Hideable Tweaker controls for fine tuning the eyes, feathers, and beak.
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Proxy GEO for silhouette refinement and avoiding groom clipping.
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Stretchy limbs and spine.
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Chest Pivot for gliding scenes.
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Corrective blendshapes for the mouth corners, eyebrows, eyes, and glide shape.
Initial Concept
Percy was modeled and rigged in Maya 2022.
After bringing a CFX artist (Jerilyn Tennison) onto the team, we reduced the size of his model to accommodate a groom. I Initially retopologized him and his face to be more appropriate for facial rigging, while Jerilyn Tennison shrunk his model to accommodate the groom.
Before
After
To make it easier for animators to create appealing silhouettes, I added a proxy geo to show where his groom and face ring would be.
Walk in Maya
(Credit to Emma Richmond for the Walk)
Walk Demo with Groom in Houdini
Most Recent Groom Render
For more efficient animation, I created a Picker for the Percy Rig using AnimSchoolPicker
I couldn't do this alone! Special Thanks to the amazing advice from:
antCGI, Rijah Kazuo, Camila Paulino , Preston Alvarez, Mason Smigel, Jerilyn Tennison
I contributed to both layout and animation on several shots of the film. After animating, I brought Percy, the environment, and the camera into Houdini for lighting and rendering.
Responsible for all animation.
LAYOUT REEL
Responsible for all camera animation, character movement and set dressing.
After a handful of collaborative experiences, I realized the importance of a centralized hub for all the important guides, information, and progress on the film. I took the best elements I noticed across productions and integrated them into one document for the team!
The main page was inspired by a previous SCAD film, Goro Goro. It mainly serves as a link hub, connecting to all of the guides created for the film and all pipeline related links. My goal is to have all information accessible to any member of the team to make sure people always stay in the loop.
The Shot List is the most used tab on the film, as it shows all the relevant animation for animators when working on a shot including due dates, level of completion, frame count, etc. Since this is a hybrid film, it also takes into account 2D animation.
As we go into post-production, we are using a Comp Tab. This visualizes the level of completeness of each shot and breaks down what needs to be completed/modified on shots as they get brought into Houdini and Nuke.
The Naming Convention Tab helps maintain name consistency on the film - something that becomes very important when maintaining file paths in Houdini.
Other tabs, like the Concept Art/Asset Development Tab and the Storyboarding/Animatic Tab have become less relevant as we have started post-production, resulting in the pages being hidden to avoid clutter.
To ensure consistency, time efficiency, and accessibility to the whole team, I created several guides for the film that relate to various parts of the pipeline.
SUBSTANCE PAINTER GUIDE
Created for our visual development team that had no prior experience in Substance Painter for painting textures.
Credit to Ananya Shenoy for helping create the guide! Ananya helped create smart textures to streamline the texturing process.
HOUDINI | COMPOSITING GUIDE
The goal of this guide was to explain how to import, texture, light, render, and composite shots into Houdini and Nuke so animators who have never touched either program can assist in the post-production pipeline!
NOTE: This guide contains some videos not accessible to the general public.
Below is a shot breakdown for one of the shots I composited on the film. All compositing was done in Nuke.
Responsible for compositing and water - credit to Jerilyn Tennison for assistance.