Had a lot of fun on this project, getting to do some sculpting alongside environments/prop modelling and texturing. The highlight was probably getting to sculpt Marley's jawless mouth, which we would see him plug his jaw back into. For the shoot, a prosthetic jaw prop had been made, which actor Stephen Graham would pick up and put back on his face. This prosthetic was scanned, and so before I started sculpting anything, i was provided with this scan as well as a scan of Stephen's head. I had a fair bit of creative freedom in terms of the brief, essentially we needed a jawless Marley, which could be gross but not crossing into "gory zombie" territory. So I began by lining up the jaw piece with the rest of the head scan, using the jaw volume as a guide to cutting away the initial shape from the head.
Next turning to some throat anatomy diagrams to imagine what we could see if a person was jawless. I found that if i cut through at the right angle, we could plausibly see features like the vocal chords. We weren't totally sure the exact angle we would see into this jawless mouth, so I had to take some creative liberty to present some of these features in an interesting way, like having the thyroid cartilage sticking out. Initially we thought we might be looking up slightly into the mouth, and were hoping perhaps we could even see the uvula dangling around. However the final angle worked well as they could animate the vocal chords moving to great effect in the shot.
Another fun aspect was getting the contrast between the skin lining the throat and mouth, with the flesh in the neck, and again with the skin on the outside of the neck. It was interesting to work out, based on the prosthetic jaw, what we would see left over on the face. With the tongue and bottom teeth gone, but the top teeth still there, we are left with an unusual open view of the roof of the mouth, the trachea and esophagus, surrounded by exposed muscle.
My sculpt was later retopologised, textured and look dev'd by other artists, before the resulting asset was integrated into the shot.
Another of my main tasks on the project was working on some of the environments. With the main focus being on the street and building where Scrooge's office was situated. We had received some LiDAR scans of a few environments, which i brought into Houdini to reduce and clean up, and cut down to the relevant parts. In reality there were two versions of Scrooge's office buildings. One was a real world location, a street in London, which we had LiDAR for. The other was the set built version based on the real location, which i had some reference images of and also blueprints for. I had to build a model that was a bit of a blend of the two. Retopologising part of the scan, and also ensuring the dimensions matched the set build. You can see the way it was integrated into the shot, inside one of the other location scans, in the breakdown video above. My role on this asset consisted of modelling and UVing, later an extra side section was added, and the asset was textured by other artists.
I also modeled and textured other props and environment assets, such as some trees in Speedtree, chimney replacements, a bell and collar for a mouse, and some modelling for other environments.
More can be read here.