THE CIRCUS | Alenamealy.Art

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THE CIRCUS OF SPECTACLE

GRAB SOME POPCORN AND ENJOY THE CIRCUS OF SPECTACLE

BREAKDOWN

The story behind this project is nothing short of a spectacle- During my first demo reel term I was approached by friends who were in their final term with a proposition. They broke down their original concept and their intentions, and the realities and setbacks that they would encounter rendering with Maya and Vray. Since they wanted to make it a goal to submit the project for Demo Reel and the deadline was fast approaching, they asked if I would be willing to join the team last minute and do all the grooming required for the characters/crowd!

I'm always eager to work with others and each artist I was working with had already created so many wonderful pieces that I feel resonate with my style! So it was an instant yes, not only would it be great practice with the deadline, but It would let me be a part of a team and exercise my teamwork skills. I managed to complete a crowd's worth of grooms and all the animal grooms within the deadline and eventually,

This collaborative project earned my team a Best of Term award for Animation!

Since the scope of the project was too large and it would have taken far too long- ultimately the scene was transferred to Unreal Engine 4 !

COLLABORATION

CONCEPT

"The Circus of Spectacle" is a collaborative project between David Eisenstadt, Rain Rouhani, Ethan Clark and myself. David and Ethan acted as generalists for the project, helping each other out in all departments. Rain Rouhani was the character artist, who sculpted all of the human and animal characters. I was the grooming artist, who created all of the hair/fur in Yeti. The project was conceived by David, Rain, and Ethan, but Rain acted as the primary 2D concept artist for the project.

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GROOMING

CIRCUS CROWD GROOMS
AND CIRCUS ANIMAL GROOMS

Since the principle character was the little girl featured in the first shot, I made sure to focus on her groom especially. This project truly taught me the meaning of haste and knowing I wanted my efforts to match the level of work already put in, I put a lot of effort within a small time frame to make sure things on the grooming end were smooth sailing!

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Knowing there was going to be a lot of grooms to tackle, I hit the ground running! To expedite the process, I created a system for the crowd grooms that would allow us to utilize the groom caches almost as if they were wigs that could be placed on different circus crowd characters!

Young Woman Hairstyle #1

CREATING THE LOOK FOR THE LILY

CREATING THE LOOK FOR THE LITTLE GIRL

CREATING THE LOOK FOR OLD RICHARD

CREATING THE LOOK FOR YOUNG RICHARD

CREATING THE LOOK FOR THE HEIST MICE

After receiving the initial rough block out of the scene, I was then granted access to refine the mice sculpts and bring life to them with expressions and grooming to tie the knot!

THE ROUGH SKETCH / IDEA

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Before exporting the groom as an abc file for Unreal Engine 4, I tested the fur using Maya, Yeti and Vray. Since I was responsible for the texturing of these mice, It allowed me to jump back and forth between Substance Painter and Maya as I refined and finessed the groom!