Paulo de Almada
Maya Generalist / Previs / Lighter Artist
Struggle: The Life and Lost Art of Szukalski (SCULPTURE SEQUENCES)
Working side by side with editor David Brodie at ELASTIC, it was a back and forth collaboration that started organically from the ground up. I created several camera moves involving dynamic angles, experimenting with lenses, and speeds for each of the seven sculptures. Then, David would edit discovering what worked and what did not. I would then revise the camera moves, and we would repeat this process until we got the right mood, speed, angles, and overall cinematography for the final edit. By the end of this project, I had approximately 420 camera animations. I also worked on developing the shader with Substance Painter which was the perfect texturing software for this project.
Struggle was an unusual project due to the abstract nature of the sequences, and one of my favorites.
Music by Kai Engel.
Rock Dog dream sequence:
For this sequence, I was given the completed character and camera animation. I then created the previs, along with a visually dynamic environment to interact with the animated character. I used one of my favorite tools, Maya paint fx. It gave me an immediate reading on lines, shapes and colors. The final version of the movie was done using particles.