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Writer's pictureAvery Buffington

Mothman Thesis Production Blog Week 36-38

Thesis Work:


Week 36: Master and Shot Lighting


3/09/2024 - 3/11/2024:


I went through the current rendered version of our film and looked at the shots and took notes on every shot in Act 1 and the most obvious problems with the lighting in each shot. Most of the issues that I identified were very common between shots. In general the sunlight (fill) was too bright but there wasn't enough contrast between the light and the dark areas so a lot of the shots just looked washed out and overexposed.


To address these issues I decided it would be easiest and most time efficient to adjust the master lighting files than to open up every single shot to check them. I reduced the overall fill light, added more contrast with the sunlight which acts as a key in most shots, and added back in the volume using a standardized cube with a volume shader which I set to be an invisible bounding box around the entire set to not interrupt the work of animators when they have the lighting assembly referenced. I used the volume in order to have a stronger overall color to better communicate the progression of time from shot to shot. More of this cohesive look can be added in post with color grading but in case we have a time crunch I wanted to be able to achieve some of it in camera as a safeguard. I worked together with my team to delegate shots to individually check their files to make sure the lighting was working as intended.


Here's a slide gallery with some of the rendered images I produced of master lighting for the interior daylight, interior sunset, and exterior daylight:


3/15/2024: Poster Meeting

Our group got together on Zoom to present our poster pitches and then we all voted on two rounds of google forms which poster would win.


Week 37: Mothman Details, Retopology, and Textures


3/17/2024: Hand and Fur Details


The previous iteration of this model had hands that were taken from the base mesh and just very quickly stretched out to give a creepy inhuman feeling to but they were just giving off hot dog finger vibes with the lack of sculpted detail.

I found some reference of more animalistic creepy creature hands that I liked and I talked with DAC Alum Sten Weed who previously helped me revamp and elevate the creature design and we went back and forth on what to do with the hands.


I took a hand base mesh and sculpted on it seperate from the overall model and then chopped the old hands off and dynameshed the new ones on and then ZRemeshed the body which worked surprisingly well.


I also added a lot of fur alpha detail to the head, neck fur, fur between the wings, and the legs. I am pretty happy with the level of detail the model has for the time that I have and I think it will read pretty well even in our darkly lit shots. I know that most of the detail might even get obscured by the dark lighting in the shots but just in case I wanted to make sure everything had a solid pass on it and also for my own demo reel purposes down the road.


3/18/2024: Retopology

Over Spring Break I came in on the weekend to the lab to work on the Moth model and retopology. I exported out all high poly geo from ZBrush and then in Maya I made sure that the existing textures that I had worked on the model such as the old wing texture I did all the way back in October, and the clothes from the Painter model which still have the same UVs even though they were manipulated to fit on the body model of the Mothman geo.




I also worked on some retopology of the head and the legs of the model.

The clothes topology isn't perfect as it's been manipulated around in ZBrush since retopoing it for the Painter model but I'm hoping it will suffice for time efficiency. I'm also going to retop the wings again. I retoped them before but they weren't high enough detail to show the details on the high poly model and the texture when rendered.


Week 38: Poster Illustration!


3/26/2024:

I have finished the lining and rendering of the greyscale version of our poster to check the values and contrast between different elements of it. I put together this process view to see each step and how it evolved and changed.



3/28/2024:


I have gotten feedback from my team, fellow peers, and asked around in several professional discord servers for feedback. The coloring process was more difficult than I originally anticipated and required a lot of tweaking and feedback. I have never used the B&W to color method of illustration but I thought it would be really important to utilize to get the contrast just right on the poster for print viewing before worrying about the color. I think overall this process was worth the frustration. I spent a while researching YouTube tutorials from illustrators using the B&W to color method and found some useful stuff that helped me along the way. I started by layering a gradient remap which takes all the black-to-white values and remaps them to a colored gradient which I did kind of a blueish purple, and then I masked out specific areas like the house, ground, foliage, sky, and Mothman to give individual color masks set to blend modes like overlay or soft light to give different hue tints to. After I finished that I also flattened and duplicated the whole image and then color-toned it to be a bright blue and another that was a dark purple and masked them by hand painting areas that I wanted to pop with extra light or shadow.



Here's the final result of the poster. It might still need a couple tweaks on small details on the text but I feel pretty confident turning it in on 3/29/2024.


Personal Professional News: WIA Mentorship, BRIC Summit, Animation Expo, Rookie Awards Entry, & DreamWorks Internships


Women in Animation Spring 2024 Mentorship:

In other non-thesis-related news, I recently was accepted to the Women in Animation Spring 2024 Mentorship program for the Breaking in as a CG Artist circle led by Areeba Rikhan, a Character Technical Director at Nickelodeon.

I am really excited for the mentorship to start and the first meeting will be on April 2nd and will run until the end of July. I've already connected with other members of the circle and my mentor!




BRIC Summit 2024 Talent and Education Day:


I attended the BRIC Summit 2024 Talent and Education Day which was an online convention from 9 AM to 6 PM with tons of panels and speakers on various industry topics. I attended the DreamWorks, Disney, and ILM/Lucasfilm recruiting panels and connected with all of the recruiters (some of whom I already met at LightBox Expo in October). I took a lot of notes on what different companies are looking for and comments on work culture so I can refer back to them when writing cover letters or doing interviews. I also attended a general gaming panel with artists from various companies and a general Q&A panel with various artists and the founders of the BRIC Foundation.



Animation Expo Salt Lake City:


I also recently went on a road trip from 3/21/2024 - 3/24/2024 with several other University of Colorado: Denver students to the Animation Expo in Salt Lake City over Spring Break! I attended a lot of panels including one from Kathryn Taccone and Will Colón on the Business of Animation, a super in-depth live demonstration of Texture based Rigging on Bunderkin by Stephen Candell the owner of Studio Zubio, and a demo reel workshop by the Eat Your Peas Animation Mentorship Collective.


I got a brief unofficial life drawing portfolio review from Mike Mattesi, the creator of Drawing with FORCE. I also got an official Animation Expo 3D portfolio review from Kathryn Taccone who gave me some really helpful business and marketing perspectives on the presentation of my demo reel work and how I can better brand myself with the organization of my pieces to target specific roles and studios.




Rookie Awards 2024: 3/18/2024


I also started working on my Rookie Award Entry for this year! I entered last year mainly with concept art from thesis and got an industry ranking certificate as a concept artist. I researched some previous award-winning entries and took notes on how their projects were laid out and what they did to differentiate themselves and provide an in-depth look at the content shown. I noticed that the best projects provided lots of detail, photos, breakdown videos, and written process thoughts behind every aspect of their projects.


This is my entry from last year:


I think a lot of the areas I can improve in are showing more of my process view. I just took a lot of images and just kinda plopped them into the post without any explanation or trying to curate a specific aesthetic or feeling to the presentation. I also just dumped my 3D work into the entry as well despite the fact that I ultimately decided to choose to enter for Concept Artist Rookie of the Year instead of 3D Animation Rookie of the Year since at the time I had more solid illustration work than 3D work. This year I will be entering for 3D Animation.


Here are some of my favorite entries from last year:





I connected with Ethan Clark on LinkedIn and we chatted about Rookies. Ethan offered to look at my entry and give me some pointers on it. I look forward to sending him a rough draft of my work.


I love how many of the winning entries have strongly curated aesthetics that fit introduce their projects so I created a few banners to add to my entry. I plan to have a detailed breakdown of my demo reel highlights and then my contributions to Mothman and BSG possibly with a specific demo reel just highlighting my work on each film from concept art to character models and textures, as well as lighting.


I made some drafts of insert process photos of individual demo reel projects such as my Winter break character project where I wanted to add photos and be able to lay out text in non-standardized ways that the Rookies format provides, which is something I noticed a lot in other entries.


I also laid out rough drafts of character sheets to combine multiple renders or screenshots of the model, associated accessories, UVs, detail renders, etc. I have so far made placeholder templates for the Painter and Alien models and will make similar character sheets for the Mothman and Human Abductee models when they are renderable with textures.


DreamWorks Internships:

After attending several info sessions and connecting with recruiters I spoke to back in October at LightBox Expo, I applied to several internship positions at DreamWorks including Visual Development, Animation Production, and Creative & Digital Marketing.


I still have yet to hear back from Disney on the CG Generalist Character Artist Internship or from Pixar on the Art Internship which I applied to in early January and February. I am very excited and hope I get the opportunity to work somewhere awesome this summer.


Reflection:

Overall it's been an INCREDIBLY busy month. I feel like my individual contributions to my thesis team have been a little lackluster as of late as I've only been able to dedicate a day or two a week to working on thesis tasks between my other classes, work, and career events. I know that my thesis team is really counting on me and I've done my best to be able to delegate tasks and provide direction when asked. This next month will be the final push towards the end and after that, it'll be over. I know my time spent on career events has been a huge investment and I'm starting to see the returns on my involvement, applications, and connections with others.

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