SECTOR 77
To start my Demo Reel, I wanted something that would reflect me and what inspired me to pursue this craft. Transformers (2007) was a huge influence for me and it only felt right to make a piece that reminded me of it. From modelling, texturing, rigging and even animation, I really used all of my tricks on this one.
(Play in full screen)
Mech Concept by Aaron de Leon
WIREFRAMES
EARLY BLOCK OUT
One of the things I discovered early on was that it was easy to make the scene to feel empty, no matter how much stuff I added to the walls. It felt more like I was conveniently placing objects into frame against one wall rather than populating a real space.
What I ended up doing was trying to find opportunities to add more depth. What's under the bridge? What's in the hallway? What's the third floor lead to? What's behind the camera? Well to be honest, nothing. When I started to design it in a way that opened up those questions, I think it helped to suggest that there was much more to this environment than what's in frame.
CAMERA MOVE
This camera setup is run on some noise expressions that are configurable in the channel box. This helped me set the move of the shot and helped me see where I can place props to create effective parallax (again, depth!).
RIGGING AND ANIMATION
The rig is pretty straight forward, IK chains in the legs, FK controls for everything else. The controls drive bones and the bones drive nulls holding geo via Parent Constraints. I shot reference of myself stepping side to side dramatically and pulled beats from each shot.
Whenever I wanted to animate a panel moving, I just selected bits of geo, parented to a new nurbs curve and popped it into the hierarchy. It's brute force, but it got the job done. I animated on top of a reference that way I can just update the rig and reload the reference.
FX AND COLLABORATION
I was fortunate to have the opportunity to collaborate with Josh Karlin, another student studying at Gnomon with a concentration in FX. He was responsible for creating the smoke sim that appears beneath the Mech. This experience helped learn how to prep my assets before sending them off FX artists. All other smoke effects are fog cards added in compositing. Thank you Josh!
LIGHTING AND COMPOSITION
When lighting the scene I was primarily focused on two things. Directing the eye and selling scale. Spotlights are a good way to pointing to something but I also built the environment in a way that either pointed to or framed the Mech, i.e. railings and scaffolding. Adding fog helped to add depth and tiny little lights helped to set scale.
