TIEBREAKERS
3D Group Animation Project
PROJECT BREAKDOWN
After hours at a bar, a foosball table comes to life, determined to finish off their tied game.
My responsibilites:
- Project Manager
- Look Dev for Characters
- Character Rigs
- Lighting and layout in bar scenes
- Rendering (split shots with Shelby Way)
Team Members:
Shelby Way, Aaron Drew, Cole LaBerge, Esther Cho, Christopher Cortez
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
For this project I was in charge of project management. This included creating spreadsheets for maintaining our overall all schedule, weekly goals, bid sheet, and asset list.
I also worked with each member of the team in establishing weekly tasks and goals in order to make sure we were able to complete the project according to our timeline.
Part of my management responsibilities also included making and giving weekly presentations for feedback and review. I collated the work for each member throughout the week and presented it to the professor and class for group feedback. This required constant communication and contact with the team in order to make sure that each person was up to date on their tasks and solve any technical or production problems.
In addition to managing production, I was in charge of setting up the pipeline on our remote projection pipeline and our school production pipeline. This entailed setting up Google file stream for the team to work remotely and then transferring those files onto our school's local render farm.
CONCEPT AND STORY DEVELOPMENT
As a team we developed the concept for our story based on the prompt "handmade". In our short, we find ourselves after hours at a bar where the players in a foosball table come to life to play out the remainder of their tied game. Jumping from reality to the internal fantasy world of the foosball players posed a challenge of seamlessly shifting between two environments using camera movements and lighting cues.
I was responsible for the final storyboard, initial character designs and character look development call out sheet.
2D animatic by Esther Cho and Shelby Way.
Reference gathering by Aaron Drew, Cole LaBerge, and Christopher Cortez.
MODELING, LAYOUT, AND RIGGING DEVELOPMENT
We developed our environment and character models, following our initial concept designs, beginning with proxy models and developing details from there. We then created rigs for the foosball table itself and each character. The 3D layout was also created beginning with proxy models of the scene, following the shot breakdown described in the storyboard and 2D animatic.
I was responsible for the character models and all rigs, as well as the layout for the bar scene shots.
Environment models by Aaron Drew, Cole LaBerge, and Christopher Cortez.
Layout by Shelby Way and concept art by Esther Cho.
LOOK DEVELOPMENT
From our models and texture concept sheets, we then worked on developing surfacing for each model and look development of the scene as a whole.
I am responsible for all character textures as well as set dressing for the bar scenes.
Environment and prop textures by Aaron Drew, Cole LaBerge, and Chris Cortez.
LIGHTING, ANIMATION, AND RENDERING
We developed lighting for our two main environments, the bar and the stadium.
I was responsible for lighting the opening sequence in the bar and shots B/H at the table level in the bar scene, as well as adding volumetric light into the stadium shots and rendering out all shots along with Shelby Way.
Lighting of the stadium shots by Chris Cortez.
3D animation by Shelby Way. 2D face animation by Esther Cho.
All lighting and 3D animation were done in Maya, with rendering done using Renderman and 2D face animations done using AfterEffects.