Cubone the Pokémon Project.

Simon Stead Showreel 2024

Motion Graphics and Animation "Pokémon Project" Breakdown.

This project was to take a Pokémon and make then live in a pre recorded live-action scene based of the visual and tonal themes of the Official "Detective Pikachu" Film. This project spanned the entire pipeline from the initial design phase to rendering and composition. 

I Began this Project with this Inspiration board which grew as the project developed, this included in the centre a group of Official Nintendo images of a Cubone which  was the main reference used during the project I also took inspiration from other fan projects.  I also researched heavily into the animal that Cubone is based of and found heavy inspiration in the Iguana.

This was my first time learning how to model in Zbrush but I believe my skills improved very quickly and I am very proud of my work. I worked to keep the Pokémon brand and themes present in the design while adding features that grew the model into a real-life design that had the reptile features and textures.

Texturing was was something I heavily considered when creating the project as  it is what brings the sculpted detail to life, I used official art of Cubone and a Colour Picker to create a colour map to begin working on the visuals. I baked in Zbrush Normal to guide my design. I used Smart textures that came pre layered with effects and displacements then tweaked each layer to match my vision for the character.

Using Mgear I created a rig that was extremely posable that allowed for a free range of movement, adding and deleting joins to get the correct amount of finger bones and to add a tail.  My weight painting was done to best allow free movement around the legs as the fat around the stomach had its topology broken on movements in older versions, working to  fix this problem was a major stepping stone in learning this skill.

Within Maya I was able to work on the Animation, Lighting and Rendering. The animation process was enjoyable and when though many iterations as I learned new skills and adopted colleague and lecturer advice and Constructive criticism. The Lighting rig was simple to only help blend the Model into the PBR Skydome that was added to match the original footage. The project was made into render layers and finally rendered though Arnold.

Finally the project was Composited into Nuke using Four render layers, Beauty, Shadow, Reflection and Alpha Reflection. I also worked on Rotoscoping and colour correction within this software.

First year Semester 2 Project, "Robots"

This project was Modelled and animated inside Maya, texturing completed in Substance Painter and finally Composited into After Effects.

First year semester 1 "Odo the Owl"

This project was created using Photo Shop and After effects to create a 2D animated project using puppet rigs.