The Joy of the Animation Journey by Lisa Dhaenens

MY DEMO REEL

I proudly present you my demo reel so far! As a last year 3D Animation student, I am still looking for an end-of-study internship.

All animations are made in Autodesk Maya and rendered with Arnold.

REALISTIC LEOPARD ANIMATIONS

This realistic leopard walk cycle was my first ever quadruped animation, made for the classes at Howest DAE. While continuously analyzing the reference and finetuning the animation of the walk cycle, I saw the rig transform into a live animal. This made me realize how much I loved animating and it became my favorite part of the 3D animation pipeline. Since then I spend more and more of my free time expanding my knowledge and practicing animation. After the walk cycle, I made the jumping animation of a leopard doing a backflip to improve my understanding of animal behavior. I focused especially on getting the timing and weight right to make this look as realistic as possible.

These animations are made with the amazing Leopard Rig of Truong CG Artist.

LASER EVASION

After finishing the classes at Howest DAE, I was selected for an animation internship for a feature film. Two months later, unfortunately all internship positions at that company got cancelled last minute. Having an empty semester in front of me, I decided to see this as an opportunity to focus on my portfolio and create some new animations. 

After the realistic leopard animations, I wanted to push myself with a more complicated human body mechanics project. I gathered some reference of cool gymnastic exercises and thought of a story where I could include these movements: avoiding lasers to steal a diamond. I found the video “Whose Heist Is It Anyway?” from Michelle Khare and combined it with other reference material into this animation.

This animation is made with the amazing Alpha rig from the Agora Community, based on the “Whose Heist Is It Anyway?” YouTube video from Michelle Khare. 

CLASSY STUMBLE

After working alone for a while on Laser Evasion, I wanted to accelerate my learning and looked for further training to be able to get weekly feedback from animators. I used Laser Evasion for my application to the 3-month Spring Workshops of iAnimate.net. I was excited I got approved for the Advanced Body Mechanics classes. As I wanted to improve creating personality for my characters in my animation, I made this animation of a small stumble. Instead of looking for reference as done in the previous animations, I wanted to try record it myself this time. I got into character, filmed 20 takes taking into account the animation principles, and ended up picking one of the first recordings because those were most natural. Since I put the desired personality and timing into my acting, I could stay pretty close to the reference.

This animation is made with the Peggy Rig from iAnimate.net.

PIRATE PROJECT

In contrast with the Classy Stumble where I decided on personality and timing before animating, I wanted to step out of my comfort zone for my next animation. First I chose a character completely different than me, in personality and proportions, and next I thought of a concept focusing more on storytelling. The pirate wants to open a hatch from where a golden light is glowing through the cracks of the wood, and goes through a whole range of different emotions from being confused to frustrated to angry to disappointed. The hardest part of this animation was getting the timing right to make this a funny animation to watch. I am currently still setting up the lights and preparing the scene to render, so it is not on my demo reel yet, but here is a the playblast of the pirate animation.

This animation is made with the Pirate Willy rig from iAnimate.net

THANK YOU FOR READING THROUGH MY JOURNEY

New animations are on its way and I can't wait to keep learning and exploring the world of 3D animation. I am always excited to meet new people. Connect with me via LinkedIn, follow me on ArtStation, or take a look at my Instagram page to see work in progress and other projects.