Pumpkin the Cat is a self-initiated project I completed at Billy Blue that aimed to develop my lighting and look development skills. I based this project on being a 3D concept art piece for a potential film, for this reason creating a sense of journey and story was important to replicate visually within the work.

There are two elements to this work; day and night. I felt it was important to show the ways in which lighting a scene can impact on mood and story. Having a variety of reference images and drawing inspiration from other works really helped in accurately representing the look and mood I was going for in my project.

The software used to create this piece: Maya, Arnold Renderer, Blender (sculpting tools), Substance 3D Painter, Photoshop, and Nuke. I spent a lot of time in the pre-production phase developing the layout with various sketches and blocking out models in 3D space to best develop where the eye would be trained to look throughout the scene. The background was modelled in Maya, and Pumpkin was sculpted in Blender. For efficiency, the leaves were projected onto planes. Texturing was done in both Photoshop and Substance Painter. My focus with lighting the day scene was to create a sense of innocence and calmness, leading to the use of warm lighting and god rays. The night scene juxtaposes this with deep blues, and glowing lights reflecting a sense of urgency. Compositing was done in Nuke to add the skies and adjust colour and other elements (particularly glow).

I created this project for the subject “Modelling and Visualisation” back in 2020. The brief aimed to develop modelling and texturing skills through constructing an interior of your choice. I had decided on Disney’s TOH main room for its characteristics and abundance of props, and revisited the piece a year later with more developed skills.

The reference is a very stylised 2D piece, so in my version I decided on a semi-realistic approach in the design and took into consideration spacing and modelled it to real world sizes. Initially everything was hard-surface modelled but in my revamping stage used sculpting for some areas I found needed a more organic look (e.g. the skull). Textures were created in Substance Painter and Photoshop. For lighting, I wanted to maintain the creepiness of the room and used the placement of the lights to create a “dip” in the middle replicating the candles as well as not allowing the stained glass windows to bleed inside too much. Rendered with Arnold, I took it into Nuke to composite some extra elements. Using 3D camera tracking I placed a cotton tuft on the couch and fire on the candlesticks along with distortion for movement.