ALENA MEALY
THE DANCE OF THE LLAMA
BREAKDOWN
Ah yes, my deep and lengthy study into grooming, stylized characters and light obsessions with Llamas and Alpacas all came together in one with this project! I began this project with creating the character in for my stylized character class and later decided to expand and create a full piece, exploring along the way the different bumps that one could encounter when grooming and transferring a groom to a posed mesh!
Ultimately this project greatly improved my approach to CG Hair and it lead to my first Best of Term win for Grooming at Gnomon School of Visual Effects, Games and Animation for Summer 2022!
INHERENTLY GROOVY
ORIGINAL CONCEPT
Knowing that I want to pursue a career in grooming and surfacing, I created this character in my Stylized Character Creation class with the intention of exploring different compositions and grooms. This allowed me some time to really dive into the process of grooming and since I have a perfectly healthy obsession with Llamas and Alpacas, I thought what better a challenge than to create my own Stylized approach to a Llama character (with many different backgrounds as you will see!)
MODELING
Aiming to improve my stylized character workflow, I wanted all of the Suri Girl's features to be striking and strong, so I put a lot of emphasis on her eye, lip and nose shape. Later down the line, I created a set of blend shapes in Z-brush that I was able to later export into Maya and test out different poses and facial expressions before the final shot.
To breakdown his journey:
He began as a War Pilot, and then he discovered the glory of Woodstock and John Lennon, and ultimately he resulted in a Llama Ballet featuring his own female partner! See to the right where it began? Ha!
I still am itching to create a character so I can use the plane model I created during my Hard Surface class!
THE JOURNEY AND PROGRESS
POSING
To keep this brief, before creating the final ballet scene, I was seeking inspiration from my favorite collection of dance movies, from Central Stage to Dirty Dancing, and I ultimately landed on the epic lift from Dirty Dancing, giving my Llamas their final spotlight!
GROOMING
What a groovy experience it was to create the look of this Llama! I went to great lengths (get it?) to really try and understand how each node in the Yeti plugin functions and how many different styles I could experiment with. The best and my most favorite part is this part, because even If the look didn't fit this character, I would later be able to recall how to create that on a different character down the road. This also really helped me with the speed at which I groom now!
As with most of my grooms, I focused primarily on the most important sections and created a baseline style that I later would expand upon. Adding attribute painting where it was needed and separating the groom from head, to inner ear, to nose. All of these sections helped me to focus on concentrated areas of the groom and seamlessly allowed me to transfer it when the pose was complete!
GROOMING IN MAYA WITH YETI
