Popo
pauline Grégoire
compositing
I had the occasion to work on compositing for a few scenes, the harvest scene in particular. That was a huge challenge, because the camera was constantly moving really fast with a lot of moving objects in it.
We wanted to create an overwhelming scene completely drenched in red that would carry the weight of what was happening without being too explicit and literally showing the deers being cut off. It was a pivot point for the story and for the character that suddenly realise what’s happening. The sound design also really helped completely deliver that feeling.
dear forest,
graduation movie
For our graduation film, we worked as a team of five, with Claire Eyheramendy, Simon Duclos, Ilef Boumeftah and Lucie Roche on an original idea from Claire. Together, we rewrote the pitch to tell the story of a woman who works for a company that cuts the last few trees on a dead land.
Until one night, a little creature leads her to a fantastic forest that begins to change her mind…
modeling and texturing
I was in charge of the modeling and the texturing of the deer-trees of the forest and of Pousse, the little creature.
One of the most challenging parts of imagining and designing them was to keep a nice balance between their animal side and their tree side, both in their shape and in their texturing. We had a lot of back and forth with the riggers and animators to make sure that they would move nicely and to identify the parts that would be flexible and the areas that would be stiff as a tree would be.
I created variations of the first deer by changing the proportions a little bit along with the colors of the texturing without modifying the topology so we could use the same UVs, rig and skin for all of them.
Pousse was another challenge, because we wanted the cutest little creature possible, that would clearly be a link with the forest but would move a lot more lightly and be more jumpy and quick.
When I thought about the texturing for those characters, I really tried to keep in mind that contrast between bendable and stiff. We also wanted to make them seem as majestic and ethereal as possible. On the neck of the deers, the lighter stripes are closer to the fibers of a young tree that can still bend, when the colored stripes are more like bark.
I also used very old sculptures of deities covered in paint and gold to bring that feeling of something magic and wonderful that should be worshipped.
On Pousse, I only used that soft wood texture and the same gold motif as for the deers, but on a much bigger scale as a way of linking them together.
Environment
For the environment, we looked for a very strong contrast between the desert and the forest, so as I designed the plants I took inspiration from dry cactuses for the desert plants, but for the plants that grow on the deers' back, I went with subaquatique plants that would glow in the dark. I really wanted the first impression that we had of the forest during the night would be something completely magical and surreal, as far from all the environment that we saw from the beginning as possible.
