3D Generalist and Comic/Illustrative Artist
.teach a fish to man
date. 2023 - 2024
Short animation with a team of ~10
Concept art lead and surfacing lead
modeled in maya, surfaced in substance painter, rendered in renderman
Teach a Fish to Man is a student film completed over the summer of 2023 and fall of 2023. As the lead visual artist and character surfacing artist, I was in charge of developing the aesthetic look of the film.
I wanted to lean into a more painterly look, since with the inclusion of both an old man and a fish monster, an overly realistic style might border on unappealing. Along with that, as we had limited access to our school's render farm, a style that didn't require elements such as subsurface scattering or grooms would make our work a lot smoother.
(left) final concept of Gillbert
(right) exploration of old man design
Because we were aiming for a more stylistic art direction, look development testing began early. This bucket (right) was modeled and surfaced by me early into the process to explore how we could incorporate grunge and paint strokes into our surfacing.
Some of my inspiration came from the thick, vibrant texture of art made with posca markers, with scribbling textured blots of color and thick black outlines on several assets. We wanted to give off the impression of a water stained, rusted environment. You can also see the stylized water highlight on the water inside the bucket. This was later abandoned due to the complexity of simulating water and then applying the highlight on top of that, but the used of chunky white highlights was still used to highlight Gillbert's eyes.
Of course, as this was not an endeavor to be completed by myself alone, we simplified the art direction for our look development artists to make sure that our film will appear visually cohesive.
