Katrina Animation & Environment

My final video for my 3D Animation class, featuring my character, Maria Katrina. Over of the course of this project, outside of this assignment I focused on expanding this character and her world, so I feel it wouldn’t be accurate to call this video the End Goal.

The overall process of making this animation forced me to expand on her as a character and who inhabits her world, and now I’m better prepared to continue developing her.

Program

· Maya ·

Character Model

The Final textured model for this project, and one of my personal favorite models I’ve made to date, particularly because of the material work I did, which I’ll expand on later.

I really enjoyed getting to build on the initial character sheet I had, because I had started with her at a later point in her story & overall development, and working backwards to get to where she started.

Materials & Character Concepts

· Maya · Ink · Photoshop ·

Texturing / Materials

My favorite part of this project was working on the materials for my model, I focused on getting the most out of Maya’s ToonShader and how I could get it, particularly her skirt, to look exactly the way I wanted it. So I corporated the OSL shader so I could get that halftone look and augmented it with gradient maps.

Skin Breakdown

Shoe Breakdown

For the shoes, I added in a bump map to help add a bit more texture to the shoes, and I also attached an OSL node to the Specular, so there would be consistent lines across the base color and shadows

Skirt Breakdown

For the skirt, I used a lot of gradient ramps and adding them in a variety of areas to get that gauzy iridescent effect, before adding a glass material to the small skirt over it, so it could lay over the halftone shaded skirt and mimic a shiny translucent tulle in a similar style, without making an entirely new material matching the style of the skirt.

Base Color OSL Shader

Specular OSL Shader

Environment

I made base models of two different environments for this project: the stage featured in her animation and the un-textured ballet studio, which I used as reference for her comics.

For the Ballet Studio, my favorite part was considering how the space would change over time, and in particular, how the owner of this ballet company would expand the studio as time went on.

Stage

Ballet Studio

Studio 1 (Main Studio)

Studio 2

Concept

Comic

This project started off as a comic initially. The main character, Maria Katrina (Katrina/Kat day-to-day), is a 24 year old ballet that’s devoted her life to perfecting ballet, though she wonders what she’d amount too without it. Stubborn when it comes to perfecting her craft, but more meek in her personal relationships, as she still struggles to find the perfect balance the (opposing) expectations and qualities her aunt and mom both instilled in her.

I started this project in the spring of 2024, as a a final assignemnt for a class, with the intention of filling a sketchbook dedicated to this character, who was a vague concept in my head at the time, and the relationships she has with the other characters. Later on, in fall 2024, I I re-visted this character again for other classes.

Spring 2024

Fall 2024

This pages, started back in 2024, are a current work-in-progress. The class was structured around 4 assignments, where each project had to focus on one of the four seasons. I planned out a comic that takes place throughout a full year and a cycle of producing a ballet show, with each chapter focusing on an individual character.

For the first season, Summer – I did focus on making it a “complete” chapter, if a short one, and for the following seasons, I planned out each chapter and chose a page or two to illustrate from it.