Wacky West
This was a team project alongside Anthony Le, Sophia Guzman, and Steve Leal. It was created in 36 hours for the annual GigaJam event for Texas A&M’s SIGGRAPH Chapter.
I was responsible for: Animation (shots 5 – 13/credits), Gooby Model/Rig, Procedural Materials and Simulations, Lighting, Cinematography, and Modeling Assistance.
It won the ‘Best in Time-Based Media’ category, and received an average judge score of 9.75/10.
This was the actual submission for the competition, the extra polish and changes were made after the initial 36 hours.
There was obviously a lot we couldn’t quite get to in that time, but I think our excellent teamwork is what let us make something like this in the time given.
Apart from animating, my effort was mostly turned towards making ‘Gooby,’ our alien character.
There were a couple of technical aspects about him that I was very proud of figuring out on the fly. I used Blender’s dynamic paint system to create waves on his jelly and make him extra wiggly where he gets shot. The way I got the bubbles inside of him was by creating a hair system on an separate low poly mesh that’s inside of him and scattering the bubbles.
Part of how I got the jelly look was through simulations and dynamic rigging (damped tracks), but I also utilized a lot of smears, squash and stretch, and other stylized animation techniques.
Original Concept art by Steve Leal.
The color scheme ended up changing probably a dozen times, Steve helped me a lot with deciding on what looked good and what didn’t, and how it all felt under the lighting we had.