This Salsa’s Got Me Stumped, 3D Animation, Maya, 2023
The following project was completed over the span of two months. The assignment was to display our character interacting with an object in a way that demonstrates the distribution of weight and force. Rather than creating a simple example of this, I decided to create a scene that additionally demonstrated humor, personality, and environmental context. I wanted to display the character in a way that showed both arrogance and humility for comedic relief. In addition to this, I decided to poke fun at a simple inconvenience most people experience at least once in their life: discovering if a lid is a twist top or not. What was really interesting about this project was giving a character without any physical qualities, a distinctive personality. In addition to this, I had to consider camera angels when arranging the single shot composition. This was also my first time incorporating modelling into an animated project as I designed the salsa jar specifically for this project. In terms of animation, this was the longest project I had ever animated in two’s with 24 frames per second. The biggest lesson I learned when completing this project was finding the perfect balance between textures, lighting, and render time. The film took days to render but was absolutely worth it as the scene is bright, colorful, and most importantly... grain/noise free.
Lip Sync Practice, 3D Animation, Maya, 2023, Audio from The Lego Movie
The following project was my first attempt at accurately portraying lip syncing with animated characters. This project was really interesting as I spent a week simply studying the ways in which people communicate. I paid close attention in conversations, watched films, and mimed in the mirror to gain a good understanding of facial anatomy. The project really helped me consider the different styles of animation whether highly accurate or personalized. Considering the audio I sampled, I wanted to find a perfect balance of these two factors that emphasized the humorous dramatization of the following scene. This was a really fun project to do and taught me a lot about anatomy, animation styles, and rigging.
Middle Eastern Magic, 2D Side-scroller Game, Unity, 2023
The following project was my introduction to game design which as a painter and animator, I found extremely intimidating. Luckily I have experience with C++ which was really helpful when coding the game. My favorite part about this project was designing the assets as it was really neat to see my art come to life. What was really interesting about this project was how I had the creative freedom to incorporate my Palestinian heritage into the design of the game. It was really fun to build a concept around aspects I am culturally familiar with.
Warrior World, 2D Side-scroller Game, Unity, 2023
Similar to Middle Eastern Magic, for this project I was to create a 2D side-scroller game with a fun and engaging plot as well as design. Considering I had designed Middle Eastern Magic first, I was able to reuse a lot of my code which really helped with managing the scope of this project. Due to the time saved coding, this gave me more time to consider the different assets I wanted to design. For this project I decided to create a cohesive theme of greens and browns to truly simulate a jungle or forest. What was interesting about this project was the scope as I was only allotted one month to design and build this game. While it was challenging, it taught me a huge lesson on deciphering what the most important elements to make an entertaining game are.
Rendered Table, Unity, 2023
For this project I was challenged to model and texture an object which would later be staged in a lit and rendered display. What was really difficult about this project was having a good understanding of the seams and how the UV map would project according to the design of the table. This was also my first time managing lighting and rendering.