For almost 3.5 yrs I've been working on mobile iOS game for kids called 'Moovie Toons' (Jul 2013 - Feb 2017) at WizarLabs Inc. (Palo Alto, CA). I've been taking up a post of Lead 3D Artist (remote). Unfortunately, for some reasons the project was shut down, but it still was a great experience!
I was responsible for all stages of 3D-content production. For the key characters and objects (about 10% of all) we've got the concepts drawn by the famous artist Nicolás P. Villarreal. The rest was either supervised or designed by myself with primary goal to keep the overall style as close to Nicolás' as possible and preserve a visual integrity.
I've directly managed a small team of 3D-artists who've modeled the environments, characters props that I've rigged and skinned. I've developed a unified FACS-based facial rig system which allowed the facial animations to be re-targeted in just few clicks, literally. Also I've modeled all modular buildings and respective LODs, created a lot of pieces of environment, was responsible for almost all in-game look development. All 3D-content have got my rapt attention.
Characters
Characters dad, mom and girl cosplaying 'The Little Red Riding Hood' and 'Goldilocks And The Three Bears' fairy tales. Promo art render for marketing.
I've created almost all key characters for the game - from high-polys in ZBrush to final rigs in Maya and setting-up models and shaders in game editor.
Mom character. Concept art by Nicolás P. Villarreal. Low-poly model with textures, rigged and skinned, in-game quality.
Dad character. Concept art by Nicolás P. Villarreal. Low-poly model with textures, rigged and skinned, in-game quality.
Dad high-poly model preview.
Little girl character. Concept art by Nicolás P. Villarreal. Low-poly model with textures, rigged and skinned, in-game quality.
Witch character. Concept art by Nicolás P. Villarreal. Low-poly model with textures, in-game quality.
Witch high-poly preview.
Tinker character. Concept art by Nicolás P. Villarreal. Low-poly with textures, in-game quality.
Tinker high-poly model preview in ZBrush.
Tinker acting as a movie director. Concept art by Nicolás P. Villarreal. Low-poly with textures, in-game quality.
Creatures
Squirrel character, a small character but still interesting. Concept art by Nicolás P. Villarreal. Low-poly model with textures, rigged and skinned, in-game quality.
Giant villain flower was designed by myself. It was meant to be an antagonist in the game. It's one of several non-humanoid characters I've created and rigged. Animation by Alexander Smirnov.
This flower was one of the most complicated characters from the technical point of view. The smooth and curved shape of the 'face' haven't permit me to use SDK-based rig like I did with human characters. Even the subtle inaccurate joints movements leaded to breaking the shape and its 'roundish' shading. So I've developed (in Maya) and introduced a system that 'wrapped' any 2D flat deformations around any curved surface - in order to preserve it's smooth form. Also this character featured cartoon flat eyes (which gave a lot of headache to the coders, btw :) ).
Tentacles crawling out of the ground. I've created it from scratch for the horror level - from design to final rig.
In gameplay the characters could be caught and put in sack. I've created this model and rigged it. Animation by Alexander Smirnov.
The rig of sack with character inside it.
Environment models
Besides the characters I've created a part of environment models, few most amusing of them shown below.
A big pirate ship, the characters should have sailed on. I've designed and created this model from the scratch. Real-time in-game quality. The model is heavily optimized for low texture memory usage. Rigged and animated by Alexander Smirnov.
Different shots of final in-game model with textures and a character for size comparison.
The windmill for fairy tales story-line. I've designed and modeled it from scratch. Real-time in-game quality. The model is heavily optimized for low texture memory usage.
The stone house for 'The Three Little Pigs' fairy tale story-line. I've designed and modeled it from scratch. Real-time in-game quality. The model is heavily optimized for low texture memory usage.
At some point I've got to create a special destructible house made of brushwood - for 'The Three Little Pigs' fairy tale story-line. The house should have been torn down by the wolf's strong blowing and the house - break into small pieces. Animation by Alexander Smirnov.
Due the mobile real-time application I've developed a special rig that allowed a desired fracturing effect while giving an artistic control over the animation (created by Alexander Smirnov). This rig allowed us to imitate the destruction into the numerous flinders using only 25 joints.
The Gas Station for the a city level setting. I've created this model from the scratch. Real-time in-game quality. The model is heavily optimized for low texture memory usage.
The observation wheel 3D-model - part of Amusement park level setting. I've designed it from scratch, modeled, rigged and animated. The model is heavily optimized for low texture memory usage.
One of the game menus featured the interactive diary with pages that could be turned over in real-time - using iPad screen and player's finger. I've designed it from scratch, modeled, rigged and animated. The diary required to develop a complex joints-only deformation rig for real-time usage.
Game look-dev
I've been responsible for developing the game look while following the stylistic and visual guidelines art-directed by our concept artist Nicolás P. Villarreal. I've tested the game for many hours, making numerous over-paints and fixing the shots. Looking for the ways to improve the overall in-game graphics quality was among my primary tasks.
The video-review of in-game test level. Beta-version was far from graphics perfection, but still was pretty much representative in overall visual solutions we used - from cartoon items and props to procedurally bent fully modular houses - in chase of specific stylization.
Besides getting pleasant visual experience, look-development of the levels required to keep in mind a lot of points such as camera FOV, DOF and even user device screen aspect ratio and orientation. The videos below show the desired level of graphics quality struggled to achieve.
One of look-dev prototypes. City level featured hundreds of 3D-models created by our art team. I've created the modular buildings and some other environment models myself.
One of look-dev prototypes. Amusement park featured a lot of interactive 3D-models the characters could interact with, like observation wheel, I've created for this scene.
I've prototyped the game main menu. It should have been real-time, animated and interactive. Besides the characters I've developed the idea, designed the storyboard and composition, set-up the scene in Maya, blocked-out a 1 min looped animation. The final quality camera and characters animations were performed by Alexander Smirnov.
Rendered cInematic game intro video - used the same in-game character Tinker with game rig. I've developed the idea of this video and storyboard, blocked-out the sequence, created the roll rig, rendered everything in Maya and finally composed in Nuke. Animation by Alexander Smirnov.
Advertisement marketing video. I've developed the idea and storyboard, blocked out the shot and performed final render / compositing. Final animation by Alexander Smirnov.
Tech-art stuff
I was responsible for preparing all characters for animating. We used Maya built-in HumanIK for human body rigs, while for faces I've developed the custom unified FACS rigs, which involved Set Driven Keys (SDKs) and joints-only deformations with max 4 influence per vertex limitation (for usage in proprietary 3D-engine optimized for iOS). It was completely character-agnostic, i.e. the animals, creatures and human characters could be driven exactly the same way. This ensured that the animator could make one facial animation and then copy it to all other characters in a fraction of time. And by the way, this rig allowed us to achieve the unprecedented quality of facial animation across all mobile products on the market.
The girl rig test and showcase. Animation was created by Alexander Smirnov for marketing materials. Real-time in-game quality.
Teenage boy face rig demo - animation re-targeted automatically. Real-time in-game quality.
Tinker feature animation, re-targeted from girl character in a few clicks. Real-time in-game quality.
Another Tinker rig showcase - animation created specifically for this character by Alexander Smirnov, no re-targeting. Real-time in-game quality.
Custom unified FACS rigs, which involved SDKs and joints-only deformations with max 4 influence per vertex limitation for real-time usage.
The prototype of face shape customization system was based on blendshapes in Maya. It was meant to be implemented the similar way using vertex shaders on mobile devices in real-time.
The prototype (in Maya) of face shape customization system with rig adaptation, i.e. we planned to add in-game face modifications and on-the-fly adjust the face deformation joints and animation.
