By Martin Cho
“Starlight Sculptor” is a 3 minute and 40 seconds animated teaser about two characters, Lowenna Newton and Unit 541, who set out on a journey to search for the thousand years old mechanical tablet that allows them to recover the Great Mother of Universe and save their home planet Gaya. While on their journey, they must face the menacing war machine to pass on to get the tablet from archive storage.
The concept of the story is inspired by John Ames Mitchell’s future history novel “The Last American” and Physical geography displaying subterranean layers from Levi Walter Yaggy’s geographical maps and charts. It was also inspired by Bionicle’s storyline and the video game “Metro 2033,” It also includes my childhood experience walking in underground cities and department store buildings connected to each subway station.
In this teaser, I used two different techniques for working on 3D animation. Character animations are fully worked inside using Blender. Originally, I wanted every character to be digitally hand-drawn. Unfortunately, this plan has been canceled due to the lack of time to work on 2D animation and submit the project’s recent updates. Instead of 2D animated characters, I made each character into stylized 3d characters, which allows me to render animated sequences faster inside Blender.
Four different environments are rendered fully on Unreal Engine 5. Most of the blocking and modeling is done in Blender, and then it’s later imported to the unreal engine in different scene files for adding textures and various assets. I’ve been experimenting with using the game engine as a background for 2D animated web series in the future. At the end of compositing every piece together, it was amazing to see how the result came out better than I thought it would be.
Watch the Starlight Sculptor teaser here:
For more images and behind-the-scenes information, check here: https://martinizer90.wixsite.com/starlightsculptor
experimenta.l. lab experience
I joined the experimental animation lab at the beginning of the fall semester of 2020. It was time I enrolled in Dr. Christine Veras’ course on animation origin and techniques; the 2D animation course wasn’t available to the students. I enrolled in the experimental lab because this was a space where students could learn traditional animation and experiment with different techniques.
It was a time when most classes were meeting virtually, and experimental lab was recommended during the course lesson. I remember participating in special meetings and collaborating with other students to create the logo animation for the lab. I used to work animation alone during my spare time, but collaborating with multiple students to create logo animations was such an experience to understand each other’s ideas and provide help during the meeting. It was fun to do such activities and animating pieces of work the way I like to make.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do in the lab, but I was glad to meet students with different styles, and it gave me a chance to share my style and interest in the future. I was so grateful to be part of a group of active members in this lab since its beginning. In the lab, I created animated short films such as “A Successful Path” and my capstone project, “Starlight Sculptor.” I hope to see more students sharing their styles and ideas to shine in the lab in the upcoming semesters.
Below are a few images of Martin and his collaborations in the lab over the years:
