Deviation Actions
Literature Text
BACKGROUND
As people, where do centaurs live? How do they live? What can the combination of a human mind with the abilities of a horse's body achieve? These are the questions I wanted answered. So, I took it upon myself to write a story to string together many of the visuals I have drawn out over the years. The ideas come from personal experiences and observations of various animals. I created the girl, Katie, to be a younger version of myself(and many other quiet and/or shy Asian girls) who is lucky enough to be swept up in an adventure where she gets to spend time with centaurs. By doing this she gains strength and confidence when she had none before.
The Thesis is a 3D pre-visualization of the scene where Katie sees her first centaur, Zeba, and the event that forces them into a closer relationship. Along with the pre-vis, I will showcase the character models and fleshed out scenes here and there.
Out of all the mythical creatures created, the centaur is the one that draws my attention. Growing up in the 80s and 90s, there were only a handful of television shows and movies that showed centaurs. Disney's Fantasia(1940), Xena: Warrior Princess(1995-2001), and the BBC version of Chronicles of Narnia(1988-1990) are the earliest I can recall.
The computer animation technology we have now was not around when I was growing up. The only way to make centaurs on film was to hand draw the animation or optically combine the motions of a real horse with the upper body of a human actor. Because of the technical difficulty, the centaurs' movements were stiff, rigidly walking straight or just stood still. As for Disney's Fantasia there was a lot of movement and exploration of small stories but the portrayal of the ultra feminine female centaurs left much to be desired. The first Harry Potter (2001) movie had a CGI centaur. The attempt to hide the crudeness of the model and the clunkiness of the animation by sticking him in a dark forest did not work. As I was working on the thesis, the 2005 version of The Chronicles of Narnia came out. It had great looking centaurs and lots of interesting movement when they did move, but the focus of the story was not on centaurs so we do not see them often.
OBJECTIVE
The target of this project is to take this story to the people who obtain new stories for possible funding and development. Another is to showcase my ability to set up scenes that are visually stimulating so that companies that have pre-vis teams would consider me for employment.
The goal was to setup a project where I get to experience every aspect of the project. From the storyboards to modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, lighting, cameras, compositing, soundFX, music and editing. I can showcase them all without the pressure of a polished piece that lasts over a minute long.
APPROACH
I have made dozens of drawing on the appearance of the centaur. I have many traditional animated movies as references for the painted textures of the environment. I own and watch several popular movies that involve horses like Sea Biscuit(2003) and Lord of the Rings(2001) for cinematic references. Various PBS documentaries about animals(especially equines) and natural environments have been invaluable to me.
I am using Autodesk Maya for modeling and animation, Adobe Photoshop for the painting of textures, and Adobe After Effects for editing.
I still think breaking it up into a 3 part brochure was best for it.
