Short Film: Spark and the Cricket

This is my student film for my BFA with a concentration in Animation and Entertainment Art. Synopsis: A young dragon is frustrated at his inability to breathe fire rendering him unprepared for tomorrows fire-breathing exam. Unfortunately his much needed sleep is disrupted by an unwelcome visitor.

I modeled, rigged, textured and animated the characters in Maya. The simple environment was built using NURBS. Spark and the cricket are fully rigged with IK/FK, spine controls, arm and finger controls in Sparks' case and 6 fully rigged legs with controls including knee twist attributes for the cricket. I gave both characters a variety of facial expressions using blendshapes.
Only the introductory pan and the fire breathing sequence are rendered out using mental ray. Someday when I have 10+ hrs to waste staring at the script editor and Fcheck I'll render out the whole thing.

Render image of the first scene

Test render of Spark's fire breathing scene

Poly model of Spark

Poly model of the cricket

Making the blend targets