The Can-per

tHE TaSK…

In a collaboration with the National Parks Service, Bush’s Baked Beans ran a contest to give away a stay at a National Park in a custom bean can shaped camper. We were given the task of designing said camper in collaboration with a partner vendor. Given the bare bones of the camper, I furnished the interior, modeling shelves, pillows, light fixtures, and extra furniture like the bed and table and textured the entire thing collaborating with a graphic artist. The project files then went back to our vendor and they brought it into real-life mimicking my own lighting set up and running with it.

The Merry Went Round

Models and Miniatures

The Merry Went Round is a miniature built and shot to look life size. Imagine if the park closed so rapidly that the rides were left for the ghosts to ride and nature to take over. A lot of my inspiration came from images of Six Flags New Orleans which was left standing and abandoned after hurricane Katrina. The final model was shot outside and then put together in after effects with some foliage modeled in Maya and rendered with Arnold.

Googly eyes everywhere

Googly-eyed characters started popping up and with our software reaching past the bounds of old plug ins, I created a custom rig from scratch that was lightweight and easy to bring into new scenes and attach to new characters.

Built entirely in After Effects, the eyes can be scaled independently or together, and have separate controls for the pupil size and even allow for cross-eyed characters. The shadows and lighting direction can also be easily manipulated allowing for variance across characters. The eye movement is streamlined into a single point controller.

The entire set up is lightweight and has various methods of attaching to characters allowing for full flexibility and iteration. The base design mimics a realistic googly eye and makes it easy to add additional lighting effects and reflections to the outer pane separate to the inner pupil and backing plastic.

Anna’s World

Anna’s World

Nature will always bounce back. After the nuclear apocalypse that devastates the world, Anna is left to emerge into an unknown alien world for the purpose of survival. I focused on the development of different decomposers and making a very unfriendly environment, friendly. Many assets were inspired by elephant's foot and the idea of mold eating away at the radioactivity oozing from it. Mold, mushrooms, and lichens aren't generally organisms humans willingly entangle themselves with. In Anna's world, they're a sign of safety.

This project started as a 3 shot world introduction, and a process that was very foreign to me. The deliverables included three different shot layouts composited to show the camera movement (below). Since the completion of the layouts I’ve explored the environment and story concept further. Intrigued by the organic shapes, I modeled a mock up in Maya

Character Texturing

Orion/The Janitor

Textured in Substance painter and rendered with Arnold for Maya for the film Laocooney Toons.

Damocles

Textured in Substance and rendered using Arnold for Maya, Damocles is a marble statue. His textures include normal maps to show wear and some cracks specifically around the damaged parts of his model.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey is a steel sculpture. He’s a blend of Substance painter and Arnold and also has the option for higher reflectivity for promotional materials.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey

Jeffrey is a character designed for the short film I’m directing entitled Laocooney Toons. I took the lead in his design and completed the model and rig myself.

Campfire

Concept

Campfire is a one shot story idea featuring a burning house. I really wanted to focus on making the world look like a watercolor painting and took a lot of inspiration from artists like Joseph Zbukvic. Besides the texturing, I anticipated that modeling a burned and falling apart house would be the next big challenge.

Maya

I kept the model for the house fairly simple. The topography was designed to show off the clear lines allow me to be creative with the textures and lighting.

Texturing became the newest hurdle for me. Prior to this project the assignments I’ve taken on haven’t been so dependent on the textures as this one. Having the setting be an exterior also posed a new challenge, considering the sun and how that acts compared to a normal light.

Final Product

Taking the renders from Maya into Photoshop I decided last minute that it needed a more substantial background. Keeping the same color palette that I used in the concept pieces, I expanded on the reds and yellows and made the sky a little bit more purple to really contrast with the mood and theme of the project.

Slightly

Slightly

Slightly is a lost boy on the run in the city. After leaving Neverland he’s got to face the people on his tail and the one thing he never thought he’d have to deal with: growing up.