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Michelle Kao
Last step : Pushed colors & contrast (Levels, curves ,brighter & sharper highlights)
Play with more colors , add finer details, patterns, Update overall palette ,add house/moss detailing
Add colorful paint wear & tear inspired by indian paint treatments and indonesian batik houses
Mask out marsh areas (show more water), define shapes ,cleaner chimney connections
Find a camera angle
Testing the heaviness of geo node generated grass vs a scatter hair system one
Added some lights, hdri, atmosphere and an ocean shader
Create and iterate on the main focus building, get design notes on each stage
Started building the set with the pieces in blender
We needed a bell tower for the BG and for the later sets in the main town square behind this one
Kept fleshing out the town, blocking out the sides and the back, added the tower in
Started designing the kitbash pieces for this little village first, always checking with the AD
Rendered out passes and layer ID's to separate, then started paintover for the first pass
Final paintover, push medieval fantasy prison ,less monotone, adding purples, blues, organic movement
Paintover
Built a base, added textures and some details
Thumbnail explorations with refs
Blocking
Iterated on more pieces so it wouldn't look too repetitive and procedural, just to have more options
Added the back hills in, finished scaffolding and jetty
Breakdown Video below
Horse Palace Corridor
Platform Structure options
Gathered own refs to pitch to AD
Breakdown of Victors Cabin
MamaK Civic Centre : Sometimes just straight 2D
Haggard Ram Bridge Town - All techniques to get somewhere and explore, Final piece below
Start Painting
Shot experimenting, story updated , we went from a scary place to a nicer place but still mysterious
Layout building for storyboarding, we went with the Globe theatre shape instead
Testing the made kitbash
Building pieces
Early exploration of the theatre, thinking about ram horn shapes and layering
Rough quick general ideations and plan sketches - Dir says to not push push shapes too much
Shots we need for the script
Idea Pitching
Finding shapes in my sketchbook loose scribbles, Director likes Russian Architecture
Color exploring, Director liked color palette of these films
More painting and some notes
Now that we have a style or direction from the wide shot, I could do the other shots :
They wanted it to feel empty uneasy yet still fun and inviting
Photobash thumbnail then base in 3D , Reused establishing shot pieces
Theatre Interior breakdown :
Exploring other theatre spaces
Gathering own refs for Russian architecture and anything that reminded me of Rams
Breakdown of the Highcliff corridor
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