Supervised a team of 30 artists on this full-length 3D animated sci-fi feature film, collaborating directly with the director, producers, and every department lead across modeling, rigging, animation, FX, and compositing. Delivered within a constrained budget while personally spearheading the lighting and compositing for 80% of the film. Launched in over 20 countries and translated into 8 languages. Winner of Best Animation at the North East International Film Festival and the 2023 International Children's Film Festival.
Official Trailer
My mission was to make the film look as good as possible for as cheap as possible. Early on, I pushed for thorough concepting and previs for every major sequence, so the team had a clear target and we could avoid wasting time on work that would get thrown away. We started production at the beginning of the Covid lockdowns, which meant I lived and breathed this film for quite some time. While managing the team and leading the visual look, I was constantly finding ways to optimise renders and speed up workflows, contributing Python tools, Houdini HDAs, and distributed rendering tasks using OpenCue. Due to the low budget and small team, I took on far more than a typical supervisor role, on my own accord, because I understood this film was our make-it-or-break-it moment.
Supervised all CG departments (everything except animation), ran dailies and weeklies, and personally lit approximately 80% of the film. Established the master look development initially in Redshift, later transitioning to Arnold. Did surfacing for multiple characters, sets, and assets, and managed all AOV and render layer standardisation across the production.
Developed a Houdini SOPs + Arnold-based render pipeline with Python and OpenCue in collaboration with the Pipeline TD. Built various caching and artist tools as Houdini HDAs, wrote Hython scripts for automated render caching, and wrangled most of the film myself across 100 render nodes. Some shots and passes were rendered in Cycles or Karma. Implemented lentil (lens simulation) in collaboration with Zeno Pelgrims.
All compositing done in Nuke. Did multiple compositing passes and shot finaling myself across the entire film. Handled camera/layout, focus pulling for most shots, and created 3D clouds for most day exterior shots in three days. Also produced all marketing collateral and 3D branding lookdev.
Developed HDAs for the Maya-to-Houdini Alembic pipeline, Arnold .ass instancer and instance sequencer, a procedural tree animator, procedural asteroid field generator, dynamic lighting HDA for the brain sequences, and set HDAs with adjustable looks, lighting, and story-driven parameters. Also helped deliver pyro and Vellum simulation shots under tight deadlines.
Galaxy Pullout — Nuke Compositing
Distributed Rendering — OpenCue
Pyro R&D — Houdini
Asteroid Explosion R&D — Houdini
Procedural Asteroid Field Generator — Houdini HDA
Headspace — Personal Reel
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