Raccoon vs Samurai

Planning

I drew half the storyboards as well as was responsible for the animatic. The story centers around a stingy samurai trying to get rid of a mischievious raccoon. After a morning of meticuloiusly tending to his garden, his serenity is broken when a raccoon steals his food. Unknowingly to the samurai, while chasing down the rodent he also destroys his garden in the process.

My part of the storyboards covers the setup of the video, where the samurai is setting up the garden. I focus on a lot of repetitive shots and scenes of his garden to establish how it looks like before its ruined, and reinforce this idea of ritual and repitition.

Modelling

I created the raccoon model out of a combination of Maya and ZBrush. The textures were created in Photoshop. The textures were made to resemble brush marks.

Animation

I played a part in animating both the samurai and the raccoon in the final animation. I kept the style of animation very cartoony - bouncy and exaggerated, to help keep it comedic. It was animated by hand by keyframes.

In addition to animation, I also helped set up the lights and render most of the animation. The final product was done out of a composite of a background and foreground layer. Although ideally the animation would be rendered using AO layers (giving the animation a soft, realistic look), due to time constrains we rendered most of it using Mentalray’s rendering engine, and Maya’s rendering engine for more time extensive parts.

Final

Final team website.