These are some short films put together over 2008 to 2009 for my final projects at Vancouver Film School.
“The Alarious Project” is a pencil and paper animation done over about 6 months, and most of it still exists as a 6′ stack of paper under my desk somewhere.
“Vegan” was written and put together vertex by vertex in Maya, all character design, modeling, rigging, lighting, and animation done in about 3 months. I created all images and animation from scratch using pencils and pixels, and I collaborated with sound design students to create the audio tracks.
The Alarious Project
In a world of dirigibles, steam engines and brass fixtures, a deinonychus mechanist and a cephalopod entomologist collaborate to usher in a new age of progress. When their latest biomechanical creation breaks free, their friendship is put to the test.
Vegan
A tiny windowsill silent movie, in which a vegan jumping spider rescues an injured fruit fly, but ends up having to fight some of his darker instincts.
Vegan was my main project during my 3d program at VFS. It took roughly three months of solid work, once I’d had a few months to learn the basics of Maya. I wish I’d had more time to animate; I spent most of those three months focusing on modeling and rigging the main characters (a 10-limbed spider who had to emote, act, run, and jump..and a really squishy fruit fly.) Most of the scenes are only blocked-in motion instead of full animation. And the spider was intended to be pretty fluffy, but since I was rendering this on my own desktop every night, I chose not to fight the rendering-plush-fur fight.
If you’re curious about the build of the spider rig, there’s a demonstration of it here (skip to around :30 seconds in to see the design, model, and rigging set-up.) You can also check out my blog’s tagged entries if you want to see the in-progress updates and concept art as I was making the film.