This gallery shows the work I created for a fun and abstract animated short. I was inspired by Jack Kirby’s work - I love his shapes, designs, storytelling - all of it. I really enjoy his cosmic adventures, so I made this project as a sort of tribute to how amazing and inspiring I find his work.
For this project, I was responsible for all the content (except the basic idea of the Space Villain, which is inspired by Jack Kirby’s ‘Darkseid’ character). I designed, modeled, textured, rigged, animated and rendered the final animation in Unity, making heavy use of the Cinemachine camera system. I love real-time animation and storytelling.
This is a still frame from the rendered animated short. Having all the effects run in real-time is always fun.
A bit of the ship used in the short. It was rendered directly out of Unity. Here, he has a kind of throne captain's seat.
Another particle effect heavy shot.
The Space Villain front view cleaned up after a bit of rendering
The Space Villain front view wireframes
The Space Villain side view cleaned up after a bit of rendering
The Space Villain side view wireframes
The Space Villain back view rendered
The Space Villain back view wireframes cleaned up after a bit of rendering
Using Substance Painter for texturing.
Using Substance Painter for texturing.
Nice face!
More Substance Painter
The Space Villain, solid view
The Space Villain, wire-frame. I did the retopology by hand.
The Space Villain, solid view
The Space Villain, wire-frame. I did the retopology by hand.
The Space Villain, solid view
The Space Villain, wire-frame. I did the retopology by hand.
Here is a progression of the sculpting steps. It started off really looking like Jack Kirby's refrigerator sized figures, but I kind of adjusted the proportions as I went.
UVs
Trying to hide some seams.
I knew the animated short would take place in a throne room, but I wanted it to be inspired by Jack Kirby's space ship design - lots of pipes and tubes and wild shapes.
A very abstract design for a space ship.