For our group project, Katie, Dom, Natasha, Su and I had each come up with a possible poster design as part of Assignment 1. Here are the 5 designs:
We all liked elements of each of the designs, so we had a group poll so we could vote for one. Unfortunately the poll was inconclusive so we opened it up to our class mates, and Katie’s design was voted as the favourite which was this one:
We discussed that our final poster would be pretty similar to this but that we would change the lighting to be more in the direction of Natasha’s design (see below), to create a lighter, more fun mood with bright day time lighting.
Katie set up the composition in Maya and posed Jake and Sidd. SyncSketch turned out to be a great tool for us all to give feedback on the poster as it progressed.
Katie then sent me the file so I could set up the environment and render it out. I opted for Arnold because I’m much more confident in lighting and rendering in Maya compared to Unreal Engine, so it would be much quicker to do (I also had the treehouse and tree set up in Maya for rendering anyway).
Seeing as we were going for lighting that was more in line with Natasha’s poster concept, I went for some sunshine beaming down from above the treehouse to frame it and draw the eye down. Here was the first draft and some of the feedback I got:
For the final version I fixed the exposure of the lights, fixed the light on Jake and Sidd, added grass and flowers and added a blue plane in the background. Finally, I thought it would look cool to have some light coming from the comic book to emphasise the magical element. The way it rendered out helped it look glittery.
Natasha then did some touch ups and added in the 2D elements – the dragon, the trees and sky, the comic strip effect and the sparkles. Dom worked on the look of the title and text.
Here is our final poster!
Reflection
Overall I’m really pleased with how the poster turned out and think it represents the fun tone of our short and the characters’ personalities.
Shannon McAfee 