Portfolios - Dominic Lutz

Aug

Buttstuff – Unity Experiment

<a href="https://fifoux.itch.io/buttstuff">Play Buttstuff on itch.io</a>

Buttstuff

A Unity excercise I created in a day. I wanted to experiment with interactive animation and secondary action.

<a href="https://fifoux.itch.io/buttstuff">Buttstuff by Fifoux</a>

Jul

Verkehrshaus Mascot „VeRo“

Client: Verkehrshaus Luzern
Agency: 110
Motion Graphics: 110
My role: 3D-Character Rigging, Shading and animation

Design & Shading

To translate the clients vision of the character into 3D we took industrial robots as a reference. The character should feel like a robot but at the same time kid-like and friendly. So we used a mixture of rubber and colored metal as a base. Because of its curious nature it should have some wear on its surfaces to reflect its adventurousness.

Rigging

Rigging robots is normally pretty straight forward, especially if their limbs are connected with rubber.

For VeRo I wanted something more flexible, because you never know what that fellow needs to be able to do in the future. I added extra controls to its forarm- and shin-elements to be able to stretch them without losing the characters believability.

Animation

VeRo should feel kid-like, curious and springy. So I animated him in an energetic but still thoughtful way to engage with the children watching.

Its eyes seem mechanical but we didn’t use the obvious solution of lenses for its blinks and opted for a more human-like eyelid approach to make it more likeable.

Illustration_to_3D

3D-Adaptation of VeRo

Octopus Shader Progression

Jul

Ashnikko – Worms – Music Video

Ashnikko - Worms - Music Video

Client: Ashnikko

Production Company: Blinkink

Director: Raman Djafari

My role: Rigging and animation

Project

When the director Raman Djafari approached me if I wanted to be part of this project I was sure that this was going to be a blast. Lots of fun creatures, a monstertruck and giant Gunadam-Like robots in a epic battle. This sounded like an animators dream.

Rigging

Because of the huge cast of characters it was clear that the rigging process needed to be fast. I built modular rigs for wings, eyes and tentacles which I could reuse for the different characters to be as efficient as possible.

The Ashnibot character got a special treatment because it was Ashnikkos Mech and the hero character of the clip. I added a lot of custom controls to her including detailed weapon handles.

Monstertruck

The monstertruck rig used a dynamic rig that automatically reacts to the ground and adjusts hydraulics, the cars orientation and rotation of the wheels. We baked this animation then to the manual rig which gave us more control over the overall movement of the vehicle. Aditionally the rig contained a facial and a wing rig to make the truck an actual character itself.

Animation

Raman decided early on to go for a stop-motion like animation style which fits his world and character design. So all the animators were animating on 2s and only locomotion and slowmotion shots were done on 1s. This sped up the animation process alot and made everything feel more stylized.

Workflow for flying creatures

Because there was a vast amount of flying creatures in the clip I developed a quick workflow to customize the flying patterns for the characters. Starting with a general flight cycle I used spaceswitching to change up the position and direction of the creatures which made it possible to iterate quickly to notes and feedback, by adjusting the weight of animation layers in Blender.

Animated Shots

Conclusion

This was one of the most fun project I was lucky enough to be part of so far. The variety of things to animate and rig was a dream come true for any animator. Raman Djafari created a great cast of characters and a fascinating world to be creative in. Additionally the whole animation crew was a blast to work with and seeing their work on a daily basis was a huge inspiration. Everyone of the team brought their own strengths to the project, Harry Bhalerao, Nate Die, Barney and Raman Djafari.

And in the end it was amazing to see Ashnikkos fans react to this crazy videoclip.

Jul

Wedding Short Film

LARP - Wedding Short Film

As a gift for my best friends wedding I wanted to create something special for the two of them. As they are both into Life Action Role Playing (LARP), I came up with this shortfilm.

Scheduling

I had the idea to create a short film about one month before their wedding. Therefore I decided on a story with 3 characters and one location to make sure I could hit the deadline.

Storyboarding in Blender

One part of my production pipeline I was never happy with is storyboarding and animatic. The back and forth between softwares made it quiet a hassle and slowed down my process.

For this project I used Storypencil in Blender for the first time. Based on Greasepencil it gave me the possibility to quickly iterate and even use all the advantages of 3D for storyboarding to speed up the whole process.

NPR in Blender

One of my personal goals for this projects is to further dive into Non Physical Rendering (NPR) in Blender.

To create the stylized visuals I created my own two-tone shaders and used Blenders Greasepencil to add outlines to the characters and draw speedlines instead of using motion blur.

The whole project was rendered using Blenders realtime renderer Evee. It was amazing to be able to animate and see the final frame right away. Only when working with volumes Blender couldn’t manage realtime playback anymore.

Conclusion

In the end I didn’t have the time for a lot of things I wanted to include to further stylize the whole film but I’m pretty happy with the final result.

There’s still a lot for me to figure out regarding NPR but I’d love to continue experimenting with it. I feel NPR gives 3D way more artistic intent than PBR which I was missing in my projects.