Lethal Wipeout
The subject of this group project was the making of a 25-second short film parodying a television show. The short film had to feature two characters talking and interacting with eachother.
Our team consisted of three animator/rigger and three renderer/compositing artists.
Here is a showcase of all my contributions to the project
What did I learn from this project ?
The realization of this short film trained me in the management of a pipeline as well as the communication between the different members of the team and the different production areas. I was also able to develop my sense of organization and rigor to ensure reliability and quality work for my team. I consolidated my skills in rigging, animation and modeling. I was also able to put into practice my knowledge of FX and especially liquid simulation.
Softwares : Maya, Houdini, Photoshop, Procreate
The complete short film
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Pre-production phase
During the pre-production phase, I was in charge of creating the character designs. We started with fairly cartoon characters with exaggerated proportions. And after several sketches of research I created the designs of the candidate and the presenter.
Modeling
I then participated in the modeling part, I modeled the interview set as well as part of the blade wall set on Maya.
Character rigging
Once the candidate modeling had been completed by the rest of my team, I created the rig.
For this character it was necessary to take into account that his right arm was going to be cut off, so I created a switch to show or hide the modeling of his cut right arm.
I also had to take into account the shape of the vest that the candidate is wearing, and to avoid problems with modeling penetrations during the animation, I added blendshapes which allow the vest to be deformed.
The candidate's facial rig also features blendshapes to be able to create different expressions when animating.
Set and props rigging
The final obstacle of our show was a corridor of various traps that needed to be animated. So I created the rig of the different traps that made up this obstacle.
Animation - Blocking
The short film has nine shots, being three animators we divided the shots equally. So I animated two physical body shots and a lip sync shot.
I started with a blocking pass where I created the keyposes and set up a start of timing using Maya.
Animation - Spline
After I finished blocking I moved to spline where I was able to fine tune the timing as well as the breakdown breaks. It was at this stage that I also started lip syncing.
Animation - Polish
The polish pass was used to refine my animation, so I was able to improve overlaps, lip sync, and expressions.
My final shots
Visual Effects
Our short required some VFX like the blood flowing from the contestant's severed arm. So I used Houdini to create a first simulation of a blood squirt, then I did a second simulation to add blood splatters.
