The Trailer Project

Introduction:

This semester has been spent working on one big project called the Trailer Project. We were divided into groups of 4 CG artists and 4 animators, and each group got a classic movie that they were going to remake a trailer for in 3D. A lot of creative freedom was given, something we appreciated a lot.

Pre-production:

My group got the Italian film "The Bicycle Thieves" (1948). The whole group worked together over the first 2 weeks, working on story and concept designs. I spent a lot of time working on environments, as well as testing out some mood paintings. In the end, we settled on having an environment with a big, tower-like city, where the richest people lived on top, and then have it surrounded by slums and poor villages on the ground. We wanted to have a flying bicycle that the main characters could fly around with, high up in the city, where they put up posters for a living.

Production:

Once pre-production was done, the animators left the project for quite some time before it was time for them to animate the different shots. In the CG class, we created the DLO, or 3D storyboard, before we started modeling the characters and sets.

We had 4 characters in our project, one for each CG artist. I was in charge of the lille kid called Bruno. I started by sculpting him in Zbrush, following the design one of the animators in my group had made.

 After the Zbrush sculpt was done, I retopologized the character in Maya. Then I rigged it, and passed it on to the animators so that they could animate the shots while me and the rest of the CG's were working on textures and shading.

Once the animation was done, we put it onto our sets, and did the final lighting and shading. I was mainly working on the shots that took place inside the city. Here are a couple of images showing what it ended up looking like, or at least very close to final:

 And here's the final result, after spending 4 long months working on the project:

Personal 3D work

Over the summer holiday, I started to play a bit around with 3D sculpting. I still find it a bit tricky to use the tools and get what I want, but it's getting better with each sculpt I make. I mostly worked in Sculptris, and then I've started to learn Zbrush as well.

Human bust:
All made in Sculptris. This is the second sculpt I tried making, and I spent a whole afternoon/evening trying to get the hang of it. In the end I got something that started to look alright.

Undead horse:
All made in Sculptris. I wanted to challenge myself and make a whole creature, and seeing as I'm quite fond of horses, it ended up being an undead horse. It was really fun to make this.

Dragon:
Mostly made in Sculptris, then details and some refining were added in Zbrush.

Personal work: Paintings

Here are some personal pieces that I've made over the summer, both complete paintings and sketches. All are painted in Photoshop.

Centaur Hunter:

An experiment with centaur anatomy.

Blood Allergy:

"Herbert was thrilled to finally get to visit his girlfriend's parents, who were both well known as some of the strongest and oldest vampires in Europe. Unfortunately for him, he got to experience the full extent of his blood allergy, when the one, rare kind he was allergic to, happened to be served that very night. Oh, the shame..."

Dragon Portrait:

Around 50 minutes in Photoshop CS6.

Speedpaintings_01:

Around 1-1,5 hours on each sketch, Photoshop CS5.

Speedpainting_02:

Around 2 hours in Photoshop CS5. Inspired by Pacific Rim.

Speedpaintings_03:

Around 1,5-2 hours on each sketch, Photoshop CS5. Focus on storytelling, composition and colours.

Biped Project

During the course of 4 weeks (February 25 - March 22, 2013), we were to design a character, create a traditional clay maquette of it, and then model it in 3D. I created a vampire character by the name Maurice Château, and I had a great amount of fun throughout the whole process of creating him.

Concept sketch (Photoshop CS6): 
Teacher: Gábor Steisinger

Traditional maquette (Chavant clay): 
Teacher: Lasse Smith

3D model (Maya, Mudbox):

Teacher: Daniel Burwen

Materials

Teacher: Ole Gulbrandsen
Week 4

This week we focused on observing and understanding different materials, and to do that, we painted still life images in Photoshop. Here's some of the things I made:

Storyboard week

Teacher: Niall Laverty 
Week 3

We've had one week of storyboards now, and it was a lot of work, but also very enjoyable. Here's a little bit of what I've done:

Snowball fight: 

 Group work:

We teamed up in pairs and created a storyboard together based on some dialogue we had to add. Here's a few pages by me and a fellow student Anne Birk Petersen:

 

Design 2

Teacher: Lawrence Marvit
Week 2

Another intense week of design work is now over, and I'm very happy to see progress from last time. We got 3 different and challenging assignments, all to be rendered in black and white, and I enjoyed them all very much.

Weapon of Atlantis:
Here I made a dead shark that can shoot jellyfish.

Dead Pirates in Venice:
I wanted a dark and threatening atmosphere, so then I made the pirates lurk in the shadows.

Fairy City:
I designed a more wild-looking kind of fairies, and their homes.