SHOWREEL 2011

A short compilation of my work from last two years of studying animation.

design, models, textures, animation - Alicja Cioch
soundtrack - Yoko Kanno Incomplete Love Story
Youtube address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gET_O08eqyg

Raven and the Whale's soul - animation

A finished animation with soundtrack composed by Nick Scott ( http://www.nickscott.co.uk/ )
Youtube address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBDSL7i8nAI

Character - Humans & Raven-human

Human characters on boats are the closest in the appearance to the origin of the story. Their Eskimo clothes are made from my photograph of frozen fields. I also used their design for Raven’s transformation into his human form.

Character - Whale's Soul

This character is spiritually bonded with the Whale, so they share similar colour theme, textures and movement. She was supposed to intimidate the Raven, but still seem kind, friendly.
I wanted to portray the ephemerality of the Soul by building her from separate, floating parts.

Character - Whale

He was one of the most interesting characters I worked on, because I had to design his appearance both on the outside and inside.
The idea was to give the Whale a majestic feel. To make him terrifying, but at the same time beautiful and decorative. I decided on a cathedral-like structure inside and used Zbrush to sculpt a character, that would match that shape.
Whale’s form was simple, so I varied his texture a lot. I mixed photos of fabrics and embroidery with painting and bump mapping in maya.

Character - Raven

Raven is a very complicated creature. Over-confident, proud and foolish, seems more like anti-hero than a main character. His anatomical build was constructed to allow him to both fly like a bird and walk like a human.
For his looks I experimented with sculpting and scribbling different kinds of birds. Combining these drawings with collages of clothes’ photographs created an appearance I was looking for – a ragged vagabond. too cowardly to take responsibility for his mistakes but too curious to stay away from troubles.

Raven and The Whale’s Soul - story

For my next project I wanted to create an animation emphasizing the character design. For the story I chose an Inuit tale "Raven and The Whale’s Soul". It presents a cast of very distinctive characters: Raven, Whale, his Soul and a crowd of people arriving at the end. In my version of the story I wanted to concentrate on complexity of Raven’s personality and his disturbing transformation.