One Man’s Trash

Spring 2024. CG render made for a 36-hour computer graphics competition.

One Man’s Trash was created with a team of 4 during GigaJam, a 36-hour timed animation jam competition hosted by ACM SIGGRAPH. All entries were judged by animation industry professionals, and our entry won Best in Still Work. Everything in our scene is modeled, textured, groomed, lit, rendered, and composited by my team during the 36 hours of the competition. My other team members were Amanda Urrutia, Adrianne Ross, and Madison Schaeffer.  GigaJam’s given prompt was on thin ice; we went for a metaphorical interpretation of the prompt capturing our possum character in peril, even though he does not realize it. Determined to snag the delicious apple atop a trash can filled with dangerous and hazardous materials, he’s hanging from a phone line nearly torn apart with exposed wires.

As lighting and compositing lead, I was responsible for the lighting and the compositing of our render. For the lighting, I created a shadowy alleyway but maintained focus on our possum character. For compositing, despite limited prior experience with Nuke, I color-corrected, adjusted values, and added depth of field to finalize the image. I also worked on some prop modeling and prop surfacing. Lastly, I was also responsible for the matte painting in our scene. As GigaJam only gave us 36 hours to turn in a finished piece, it was an exciting and different experience to go through each of these stages in such a fast-paced manner.

Roles: Lighting (lead), compositing (lead), prop modeling, prop surfacing, matte painting

Software Used: Autodesk Maya, Nuke, Pixar Renderman, Adobe Substance Painter, Procreate

ZDepth Comparison

Modeling and Surfacing