visual development & ILLUSTRATION
MOON SEED SHORT FILM
"Moon Seed" was my senior film at the Savannah College of Art and Design, with original pitch by Kenzie Callahan and working alongside my senior classmates Liz Copeland, Drew Dowgiallo, Natasha Chan, Harsh Trivedi and Sam Harris.
For the project I worked mainly as character designer, production manager and art director, but also tackled animation, 3D modeling, lighting and texturing.
It was a challenging yet entertaining project to work on because it was inspired by several cultures and myths from around the world. We were inspired mostly by Eastern culture - Japanese, Chinese, Persian and Indian, but there were also elements inspired by Incan, African and Polynesian cultures. It was not supposed to be from anywhere from this world per say, but a fantastical land were anything was possible - where a powerful little girl could be responsible for making the sun rise.
Mural design studies for the Sun Mountain.
As Art Director of the short, I researched which mood and tone I wanted to bring into the story. I had a very clear path to which direction I wanted to go with my team: Sayori's journey would go from a cool color palette slowly acquiring more warmth until it resulted at the bright warm tones of the breaking damn.
Here are some process stills of the film:
SAYORI - MOON SEED
Sayori is one of the main characters of the senior film "Moon Seed", to be released in Spring 2019. This student short is being developed at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Before settling on Sayori's final look, I did several color and design studies to see what kind of ethnicity and cultures she could represent; and also if we would go for more natural/human colors or magic colors such as pink hair and gold eyes.
Originally she was going to have long hair, but later I experimented with other hair styles that would be easier to animate.
We finally decided that even though the story was placed on a magical land of myths and legends, Sayori would be a brown girl with dark hair and eyes because we though this kind of representation was lacking on other cartoons.
MOON MOTH - MOON SEED
This little guy is the other protagonist of the film. He might be tiny, but is full of emotions; and also carry a super important role fro the moon ritual.
My final Moon Moth 3D design. Modeling by Kenzie Callahan and textures by Harsh Trivedi. See more at my Character Design page .
During my development of the flora for this fantastical world, I played with several silhouettes and researched how we could translate those shapes to a final 3D look that still carried the painterly, dreamy quality we wanted to bring for the environment.
Feel free to browse the gallery to
see more of the process!
