MIDOMARU | 3D Generalist
“The Woodland Booknook” 2025 LMU thesis short film
This is my thesis film from Loyola Marymount University, a collaboration between a main production group of 3 artists; Siteng “Eric” Fan (https://www.sitengfan.com/) , Nhu “Amy” Ninh (@artasticfrog on Instagram), and Thomas Glazier. As is the norm with thesis films, I wore many hats but mainly focusing on anything character related (modelling, texturing, rigging), animation, as well as acting as the rendering/compositing team. Upon entering this project, I coordinated with director Ninh on technical challenges, which included our protagonist “Fox” being able to work as a biped and quadruped as well as his jacket being able to retain open and closing function between the previously mentioned states.
“Fox” was the most complicated rig in this project. As stated before, a key aspect of this rig was the ability to animate between bipedial and quadruped motion. This was accomplished through bones mapped to actions that allowed for a smooth transition between the two states. The model also included retractable teeth and claws as well as a myriad of other controls to fully accomplish the vision of the director. One of the major challenges of the design process was translating Ninh‘s graphic art style to 3D, the original concept of the fox was revised and changed through the modeling process eventually landing on the result with handpainted textures to retain the “handmade” feel.
These models were the basis of all our characters — other than “Fox“. An important aspect to these characters was having texture variations so they wouldn’t feel copied around. The unique-ness of each character was focused on in the animation as we wanted to make sure each character had a place in the scene. They also built the basis for a Geo-Node crowd sim I designed as part of the stretch goals. A fun additional note is that both rig demo videos were made for a series of seminars I hosted on 3D animation at Loyola Marymount University.
Software(s) used: Blender
