Katelyn Scully
Animation & Character Design Portfolio 2023
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3D Character 2022-23
This project is my second attempt at modelling a 3D character for animation. This time, I decided to step slightly out of my comfort zone by designing an animal-like character. My initial sketches for the character, props and scene are shown below. I decided to go with a fantasy inspired look for the character and the setting, and ended up landing on a concept for a sphynx cat character who works as a travelling merchant with a wagon, but I also added some smaller elements that hint he may be more of a mischievous, immoral character, for example the scar on his eye, lopsided smirk, golden teeth and jewellery, that were based on some fantasy pirate designs to subtly imply he may be a thief. I tried to think of the character mostly in shapes at first and tried to construct him mostly out of triangles, especially the head shape and ears.
Below are the final model sheets for the cat and the magic staff. I went with a mostly pinkish-purple colour scheme for the character and scene, as purple typically has supernatural or ominous connotations in media, and while pink is typically seen as cute, it's also close to red, which is also often a colour associated with evil. For the staff, I used a more blue-ish purple colour so that it would stand out from the cat to make it slightly more clear that it doesn't belong to him. I changed some other things in the design from the sketches, for example it was important to the story of the character to make him less 'cute' than he appeared initially, and to do this I added more wrinkles to his face, gave him hallowed cheeks, and narrower eyes and pupils.
With the character design completed, I then moved on to the storyboard. The main goal for this animation was to show some complex movement, but I also personally wanted to express as much character and story as possible in a short time, as well as get some practice with special effects in 3D by trying to create a magic glowing effect, environment fog, lightning, and smoke. I decided on having the character talk directly to the camera and try to sell the staff to the viewer, and the complex movement comes in when he tries to demonstrate the staff's power and can't control it, which results in him fighting with the staff while he's being dragged and pulled around. This was also a great opportunity to work on my storyboarding skills, to keep in mind the location of the character and objects in the scene to make it as clear as possible before getting to animating.
3D Character Animation 2021-22
This project was my first attempt at doing a full character animation. The video below is the final sequence. This project was a very informative experience for me when it came to learning how to animate scenes in 3D, it helped me a lot when it came to modelling, rigging and animating on future projects.
Below are my sketches for the character. I initially started off with the idea of the character as a graffiti artist and a skater, but scrapped this idea as it wouldn't allow me to do much interesting movement and also didn't allow for a typical walk cycle. Eventually I thought of an idea that could go along with my existing sketches - I decided to make the character a parkourist, so I could show the character leaping and jumping. In the research stage, I also came across some footage of Olympic pole vaulting and decided to incorporate that as well.
Below are the model sheets for the final character design and the vaulting pole.
Onto the storyboard next, I did some visual research into parkour moves to incorporate some into the animation as well as more videos of pole vaulting forms so I could get a realistic look to the vault. For the scene, I chose to make the buildings in the background shades of blue; I felt that this was the easiest way to get a stylistic look in the final short without having to render and texture lots of detailed buildings or have to render a large scene. I kept most of the scene white so that the rooftops the character is vaulting between would look clean and well kept in comparison to the character, who is more rambunctious and asymmetrical. The white and blue in the scene colour palette also help her stand out more, as she is mostly dark colours and greens. I also some yellow elements here and there as a complementary colour to the green.
Shown below are some basic renders of the final model with textures added. Lots of things were changed from the 2D design, most notably the belt-tail was removed as I thought it would cause a lot of unnecessary extra work to rig and animate and didn't add that much to the overall animation, since it was only occasionally visible in the storyboard. I also decided to change the hair to remove the green, as it was more clear on the model that it overcrowded the design and distracted from the face.
NESCol Group Animation Project
While at NESCol, part of my coursework for year 1 of the 3D Animation course was to create an animation on sustainability for the college. I was part of a group with fellow students Sergejs Deikins and John Rogers, and the video below is our final animation.
Before we started any animation, we took some time to create our own ideas and sketches. Below are some sketches for the characters and scene objects. The first image was created by Sergejs Deikins, which ended up being the biggest inspiration for our final character designs. The second image is my own work.
We also created separate storyboards for our own individual ideas. The first two images were my initial storyboards, and the final image shows our final storyboard created by me, based on a combination of all three of our storyboards and ideas.
Next I designed the characters for the animation based on some of my sketching as well as on Sergejs' initial sketches. The main change was slightly changing the style so the characters appeared more toy-like. The second biggest change was to change the colour palettes so that the two would look cohesive together, but also look distinct enough that they couldn't be confused. I alternated the shades of purple on each character for this reason, as you can see the darker purple is used in the middle on the first character, while the lighter purple is in the middle on the second character. I'm particularly happy with these model sheets as they were created on a very tight deadline, fully designed and completed in the same day, and I believe the final results show my intent of making the college seem like a community with how the characters complement each other.
'Skills For The Future' 2D Animation
This project was a commission from ABZ Works, an organisation in North-East Scotland that aims to teach school children about the importance of life skills outside of schoolwork. The guideline was to create 2D animation that could explain ABZ Works' Meta Skills to children in a simple and understandable way, while remaining engaging and interesting. Below is the final animation, but lacking sound and voice acting. This project taught me a lot about animating in After Effects. All of the assets for the animation were drawn first by hand as still images, and every single individual element were separated from each other so I could allow myself the most flexibility in After Effects for the final video. I had lot of fun with animating this way and would love to try it again in the future.
First, after doing research into Meta Skills and brainstorming ideas for the animation, I started sketching some character designs as I knew I wanted characters kids could project onto to be the focus of the video. I chose a variety of animals and designed them based on a specific shape each, in order to keep the distinct from each other. I specifically chose Scottish animals in order to tie them together in a theme. I chose animals both because children may be used to seeing anthropomorphic animals used to express morals in media, like movies and TV, and also because as non-human characters they don't necessarily represent any specific human ethnic or racial groups so everyone can feel represented. I also experimented with different colour palettes on the bottom using gradient maps, but later went in a different direction.
Next I finalised the character designs before moving onto the storyboard, and decided to create the distinct colour palettes by colouring the characters in greyscale first and applying a single colour as an overlay, which makes them stand out much more. In the end, I decided on the Scottish fold cat as the narrator, designed to look like a teacher, and a hare, seagull and West Highland terrier, all of whom are designed to dress more like students, I decided to use casual clothing rather than a school uniform as it felt more fun and made each character unique.
Then I moved onto the storyboard. I had written up an animation treatment to pitch to a member of the organisation so I could make adjustments to my general plan before I started drawing. This storyboard also goes along with a pre-written script I had already finished beforehand, again to minimize making too many changes in the animation stage. In the treatment I decided to have each scene be made up of a single colour palette, starring one main character, so it could maybe cause young children make associations between each skill and a specific colour or character to help them retain and recall the information later.
Surface Texturing & Shading Scene
For this project, I created a scene for the purposes of practicing with lighting and texturing in 3D, based on the prompt 'place of worship'. Below are some of my sketches. My scene was based on Eastern temples, especially Chinese Buddhist temples, because I was inspired by the colours used in the architecture and interior design in the examples I saw. They tend to use much brighter colours, like reds and golds, contrasted occasionally with blacks and browns. I also saw an opportunity to make use of some of the different lighting types temples often have, like paper lanterns open roofs and burning incense. Before I started modelling, I sketches out a floorplan and some ideas for objects in the scene and the types of textures I would use for them. I also created a detailed sketch of a large statue in the middle, especially of the head as the bird crown and the paint on the face were important to the storytelling of the scene.
When it came to texturing, I made all the textures myself from real life photos I had taken at a church. A lot of the photos made it into the final scene in varying forms, for example the stone was used as the wall texture, the scratched brown texture was used for the floor tiles, and the peeling wood was used to texture the wooden planks of the donation box in the centre of the scene.
The most important part of the scene was the donation box. The model for the box itself is a fully flat rectangular box, the depth and gaps you see in these renders below are made completely using displacement and alpha maps. I also used a bump map to give the wood texture, and a metalness map to select only the yellow paint to have a metallic look to it.
Below are the final renders of the scene, including all my maps and models, as well as some lighting and special effects. In order to create the god ray effect beaming down on the statue, I had to create a very thin fog effect over the scene for the light to bounce off of. I also made some smoke on the incense sticks to enhance the scene, as well as a fake fire effect on the candles on the plinth of the statue, which is created using a drawing of a flame on a 2D plane, an alpha map to create the transparency, and making the texture self-illuminate. I also used these techniques on the paper lanterns in the back to make the tassels using alpha maps and the glowing orbs in the centre.
Audio-Visual Industries Animation
The goal of this project was to create a short animation that could be used as an industry title card for a fictional animation studio. For this project, I used a mix of 2D and 3D animation. This project was my first real introduction to editing in After Effects and how it can be used to enhance animation, and a great opportunity to practice with frame-by-frame animation. Below is the final product and a specification sheet for the logo.
Environmental Modelling + Robot Animation
For this project, the goal was to model a warehouse scene, and then create a robot character to fit in the scene for a short animation. This project was my first real attempt at working in 3D, the process taught me a lot about animation in 3D and about using 3DsMax. The video below is the final animation.
The first step in this project was to create the environment. At first, the warehouse was modelled mostly empty so it could be filled with props later, and this first result is shown in the video below. This video also served as a test for using the daylight system in 3DsMax. I learned so many useful skills in the process of creating this environment that helped me a lot in future projects.
Next came texturing and filling up the scene with more objects. This is shown in the video below, which was also used as practice for working with a camera in 3D. I learned so much about using textures in 3D modelling, including both how to use pre-existing textures and how to create my own. I also created some props to fill out the scene and make it feel fuller, I designed the props to match the character would come in later
Then I went on to the character design. Since the character is a robot, I decided to lean very heavily on simplistic shapes so I would have an easier time modelling when it came to recreating the character in 3D. I tried to reincorporate different versions of the same shape, the lightning bolt, as much as possible - for example you can see it not just on the chest and back, but also as the grooves in the tyres, the stripes on the skirt, and also in the shape of the earpieces.
When it came to modelling and animating the character, I found out very quickly how difficult it was to translate a design from 2D to 3D. A lot of things changed in the process, for example the proportions of the head size compared to the body are much different. My first experience with character modelling taught me a lot about translating a design from 2D to 3D which helped me a lot when I came to work on my character animation.
Digital Drawings
I started out as a digital artist in 2015, when I got my first real tablet for drawing. I am largely self-taught, learning almost everything I knew prior to enrolling in college in 2020 either online or by my own experimentation. I've found that having a background in drawing has been really helpful for animation, not just in prop and character design, but also in learning to think about depth and shape, even in a 2D plane. Below are some recent examples of my artwork and a gif showing the process of one of the pieces.
Traditional Drawings
Alongside digital art, I also often work traditionally with pencil and paper, since I find working on paper eliminates a lot of the complexity that comes with using software and allows me to focus much more on the forms I'm trying to capture. All of the below images are examples of some of my paper drawings.
