January 2021- December 2021
Octo Ninja
Project
a 2D and 3D animated short film as part of UT Dallas ATEC's Animation Lab
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Plot
"OctoNinja" is a ridiculous ninja comedy following our 8-legged ninja hero as he battles his way to the final confrontation with his squidy arch nemesis.
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Roles
Motion Designer, 2D FX artist & collaborations with the Marketing team
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Official Website
https://atec-animgames.com/octoninja
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Tools
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe After Effects, Nuke, Maya, Procreate, Spark AR
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Note
Currently in production, so I'm unable to display the entire project due to confidentiality restrictions.
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A quick rundown!
Background
Our quick yet clumsy protagonist has been training to be a ninja since he was a larva. Though often blinded by his own fabulous looks and quick wit, Octo is up for any mission…even if he has no idea what he’s up against.
Once a mar-SEA-al arts Master, now a master supervillain! His pension for salvaging lost treasures from the sea makes him no stranger to technology and is posed to use his found knowledge to take over the world!
Adding life to the 3D film
Here is some footage from Mitchell V Machines, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to exemplify the look the directors had envisioned.
Some words and references to further describe the look and aesthic
Amature/Childish
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(Footage from the Toy Story series)
Humourous
(Footage from Phineas and Ferb)
Over the Top
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(Footage from Spongebob's Movie)
"Evil Plan"sequence
In the short, there is a 20-second 2D animated sequence where the antagonist explains his evil plan to the protagonist in order to get him on his side and fight a common enemy, the humans. This "Evil Plan" sequence is a shadow puppet segment.
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We went through a couple of rounds of iterations to get the storyboards to be finalized
After the boards, we started working on the final sequence, so we illustrated 40+ assets that would be animated
We also started looking into ways of creating animation with an organic feeling because in the short film our shadow puppets are hand-held by Squidvicious. Each member of the team did some research, and we came back together to discuss our solutions and finalize the best route to go about it.
I looked into motion capture, and that ended up being the most organic, efficient, and smooth method so our team went ahead with it.
For the sequence, a big challenge was figuring out how to animate squid's tentacles, so here's a screenshot of how we broke the character down into independent assets that would be parented to one another
Here is the current storyboard sequence till date!
2D Effects
Additionally, we are also responsible to 30+ 2D effects including bubbles, lightning, action lines, zipper lines, impact bursts, sparkles, etc. All of these assets will be composited by us in the later stages of the production pipeline.
Here is an example of a bubble animation test, and a test of a vertical slice of it composited on top of the 3D assets
Here's another example of an initial lightning test, and a later version with more detail, contrast, and glow to add to the intensity of the shot.
There are also more character driven accents, here are some visual developments for it, and an example of how it looks composited onto the charaters.
Here's an example of a starfish emotion test and a background replacement test for the same shot. In the pipeline later on, they'll be composited on together to create a specialized look at the end.
Production work
Here's the logo animation that I worked on for the short
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We wanted it to convey the theme and feel of the short film by illustrating that it's a noir film situated underwater, filled with mystery!
Here's the poster my team and I have been working on. Our protagonist is an octopus named OctoNinja, and our villan is a squid named squidvicious!
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A collaboration with the marketing team to create a banner for the website
Latest update of the opening sequence!
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Inspiration from James Bond!
The latest test of a Face Filter!
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Used patches, logic gates, and randomizers to build it together
To be continued!
This animated short is still in production, and due to privacy and confidentiality reasons, I'm unable to display more on this website. Please let me know if you have any more questions!
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Stay tuned to see the whole short release in December 2021!