We have three main characters - The Soloist Sisters. They are Ava (large and in charge but dainty and soft), Zema (neurotic neat freak with a squishy heart) and Sorna (the life of the party always).
Here I explored some design and style concepts for our three sisters. They also have a dog, aptly named Dog, who is a crazy, messy little thing they all love.
This was an early concept for the four characters. It worked really well but didn't hit the mark exactly. It was a great base to work from and got us to our final design.
An early sketch vs the final 2D design! The characteristics of the characters remained in tact while their designs just improved and finally fitted a 2D approach to 3D characters.
Expression, expression, expression! I loved discovering our characters' personalities. That dog is something else, though.
Two of the three sister host auditions for an upcoming musical performance, and these are some exploration for our Audition Ladies. They had to be derived from the main characters to help with the 3D workflow.
I designed all the characters for my graduation short film from Gobelins, The Soloists. This is Sorna, and she is by far my favourite character. I had the opportunity to model her and Zema.
I love faces, and I love sculpting! So I really enjoyed being able to help our rigger, Rahzak, in sculpting her blendshapes and face deformation shapes. I helped on doing this for all the characters of the film.
This is Zema. She is highly strung and neurotic. I loved working with sharper angles and crisp wrinkles to give her (and Sorna) a stylized a look as possible.
Deforming Zema's face was really hard as she has no nice, squishy face fat to work with! But I really enjoyed helping make her come to life.
Using the existing characters and backgrounds for the film (in their local colours), I created the lighting script to help us understand our approach to the 3D lighting in the film.
I really enjoyed the challenge of working with the lights to help carry across the story as much as possible.
Above all we wanted our film to be beautiful.
I graduated in July 2021 from Gobelins l'Ecole de l'Image with a Masters of Character Animation and Animated Filmmaking. Here are the character designs as well as the lighting script that I created for the mood, storytelling and cinematography of our film, The Soloists. Within the film I was one of the Directors, as well as the Lead Character Designer, a Character Modeler and Sculptor, a Lighting and Rendering artist and overall Production Manager and Generalist.
