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Michelle's Portfolio

Illustration Portfolio
3D Modelling & Animation Portfolio

2D & 3D Animation Portfolio

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Index:

- Mascot Character Illustration

- Illustration for Games

- 3D Character Modelling, Rigging & Animation for Games

- 3D Design (Blender -> STL) for 3D Printing

- Corporate Explainer Videos

- Short form 2D Animation

- 3D Logo Animation

Michelle's Portfolio

Illustration Portfolio
3D Modelling & Animation Portfolio

2D & 3D Animation Portfolio

Check below ⬇

Index:

- Mascot Character Illustration

- Illustration for Games

- 3D Character Modelling, Rigging & Animation for Games

- 3D Design (Blender -> STL) for 3D Printing
- Corporate Explainer Videos
- Short form 2D Animation
- 3D Logo Animation

Illustration Portfolio

Mascot Character Illustration

"LOOOOOVE IT"

"Hey Michelle, I have just made payment. thanks for all your efforts so far. I'm stoked"

Robot Mascot Logo

"Hi Michelle, I wanted to ask if you have any availablility to illustrate something for a business I am starting? My partner and I have seen your work and we would be stoked to have you design something for us.

Brief: We are starting a sound design company and we want a droid similar to those from Star-Wars because sound design has a rich history within that era of filmmaking. We also want a unique style for the illustrated robot as well, so a retro vibe is what we're looking for as well. You have full creative control on what the robot ends up looking like minus some specifications that need to be on the robot. We have sent you some inspiration / reference pictures of what we personally about some of the smaller Star Wars robotdroids."

My approach for this specific illustration started with doing some warm up sketches based on the reference images the client supplied. At the time I haven't been doing many hard surface based characters so I felt a little bit rusty which is why I made a few sketches of the rovots in different angles to get a better sense of the forms I was looking at.

I quickly realised that the brainstorming an d experimentation for this character would be much faster and easier to do in Blender by combining the different kinds of shappes I was seeing in the examples and from my own research on old sound equipment and stereos. I came up with a head shape I liked but it took about three to four tries before the "legs" seemed to make sense with the shape language I was using for the torso.

After cleaning up my model in Blender, I added lighting and posed the character in a fewdifferent ways to figure out how exactly the contrast would sit nicely while I kept inmind the type of hatching method I wanted to use when I brought this 3D reference I made into my drawing program (Clip Studio Paint).

The final result was a clean and polished digital drawing my client could use for their business.

Mascot Character Illustration

Women Game Jam Africa Otter"

"Hello Michelle... we're pressed for time but we need to have artwork done for our WGJ SA 2024 poster... we really need the artwork of our otter mascot. I'm a little bit design illiterate so I'm not one0hundred percent sure how to describe the style we're after but we do have some examples of previous posters."

For this project, considering the tight deadline - I recommended to my client to focus solely on their unique mascot illustration. As posters could be made on a platform like Canva, they were already familiar with using. To that effect, I created two versions of their mascot, keeping in mind how easily they could be used for various poster placements. I decided a "floating" bust element would work well because the otter would still be recognizable along with her gaming controller and I could use pool ripples in the vague shape of Africa as an extra element within the overall design.

The full body version was made for use on posters or any large scale formats for web or social media or print - where the bust was made with the idea that smaller spaces such as icons or profile pictures would be more difficult to identify the full body otter mascot.

Illustration

for Games

Theme: Retro Games with a twist

Game Jam Duration: 5 days

Role: 2D Artist

Game Jam :

Infection

We all know Pac-Man, and for this retro game, my team and I decided to create horror version where your body is being attacked by virusses in this game called "Infection".
For this game, I created the brain with eyes, and major organs (liver, heart, lungs) as well as the bloody-veiny background seen in this game.

See the itch page and play the game here: Infection

Illustration

for Games

Theme: Retro Games with a twist

Game Jam Duration: 5 days

Role: 2D Pixel Artist; Sprite Animator & Copy-writer for itch.io page.

Game Jam :

Space Defender

For this space invaders inspired game, my team and I decided to flip the script by having the opponents be humans and aliens but the player would play as the alien.

I wanted to have fun with the enemy designs so I pitched to my team that we could have different extremes of the human race as caricatures in their spaceships: Food conglomerates (I was thinking about how big fast food restaurants are now as a precence on social media so I thought this could be a prominent one to add); Hippies (I was thinking of the modern no-mads and free spirited 60's and 70's) and so on.

For this game, I created pixel artwork and pixel sprite animations. (Beetle VW Flower Ship, Golf cart Ship, Burger Truck Ship & Projectiles).

See the itch page and play the game here: Space Defender Game

3D Modelling & Animation Portfolio

3D Modelling,

Texturing

& Animation

for Games

Theme:

"Strange Powers"

Project Timeline:
10 days

"Chemical Plant""

I was on a four person team, working on this mini two-week game jam as a 3D Character Artist for the main character. This little guy is a plant near a chemical plantation building, who got infected with some of the nearby waste that spilled into the river. The toxic chemicals then turned him sentient.

With a little bit of brainstorming and researching different interesting plant species, I narrowed down the specific look I wanted to go with for this character - I didn't want him to look like "Groot" from Marvel so I decided to go for a more flowery plant instead. I also thought about maybe combining different elements of different plants together as well to form a unique plant creature.

Here you can see some rough sketches for body proportions and two different designs I had in mind for the character.

The final version was the sharp headed one and my next step was to 3D model him. After that, I exported the UV map layout so that I could manually add painted textures as seen in the three square images.

Then it was onto animating the specific mechanics neede for the player character. I used some Mixamo animations for some of the movements and the rest I animated myself in Blender.

Play Chemical Plant Here

3D Character

Modelling,

Texturing

& Animation

for Games

Theme:

"House Guest"

Project Timeline:

10 days

Role: 3D Character Artist & Character Designer & Copy-writer for itch.io page.

"Rat Rampage"

I was on a four person team, working on this mini two-week game jam as a 3D Character Artist for the main two characters - Frank the old man and the Rat.

I found references for a low poly style the team and I agreed on beforehand for this game and I found a few real references of rats to use during the box modeling phase. For Frank I sketched out a quick character sheet first as he would be more recognizable than a generic rat.

After adding basic materials to different areas of each model, I added a Blender rig to each character (I used the cat rig for the rat and deleted any unneccessary bones). I tested the weightpainting on each rig as this part of the process usually gets a bit tricky since it's a mix of weight painting fixes and mesh changes that allow the character to look "correct" while it's moving. Although tedious, I do enjoy the satisfaction of getting it to work correctly. Then the different movements needed for the game is created by basing them on the mechanics the team and I agreed upon according to a priority based list. Walking, Idling, Throwing, Injured, Jumping etc are just some of the various individual animations I animated from scratch for this project.

Now that all the essentials were finished, I could go in for finer details like creating custom textures for both characters by using the initial blocking of colour I did earlier to help me see where the UV textures need to go. Using Clip Studio Paint, I added some finer details in Frank's face and the rat's fur (although this didn't end up showing up too clearly in game after all).

For our game's Itch.io page, I used some assets my other team memeber made (see the 3D keyboard keys) as well as some images I found on google to quickly create a Controls Image to add to our page so that players would clearly be able to see how to play the game. I also rendered out the two characters in different poses and places using Blender, just to enhance the UI in game as well as on the itch page.

Play the Game Here

3D Creature Modeling

Mothica

This is a personal project I created in 2021 during one of my 3rd year projects where we had to create a short movie trailer for a VFX compositing module. Although I quickly realized that compositing wasn't my strong suit - I absolutely loved creating this character. From Concept sketches to sculpting to modeling/ retopologizing, I was having a blast! At this point in time my texturing skills were a bit lacking but I managed to use some real moth images to create the overall textured look.

3D Design for 3D Printing

Print My Thing (Now) SA

I have partnered with Print My Thing SA as one of their 3D Designers.
Sometimes there's a specific object you want 3D printed to fix a gap on your figurine, to replace old parts of your car that aren't manufactured anymore or you have a specific design in mind that you can't seem to find online - this is where I step in!
How does the process work?
1. The client may approach Print My Thing via their website.
2. If custom 3D design is needed, Print My Thing contacts me for a quote for the custom project's design and Print My thing gives the client a collective quote that includes design costs as well as printing costs.
3. Once the client gives the go-ahead; I start designing after requesting measurement information as well as pictures of the object if possible.
4. I use Blender for the 3D modelling process and Clip Studio Paint (Similar to Photoshop) for any modifications I need to make to photos that are photographed skew, or not yet ready to be used as a blueprint for the 3D modelling process.
5. After the onject has been modelled, I export the object as an STL file and Print My Thing uses that STL file in their 3D printing machine's software to align it for printing.

The first project I completed for Print My Thing was a set of Toyota Mud Gaurds for a 1983 Corolla where their current guards were a bit worse for wear. This project came with it's own challenges; such as receiving the correct and most accurate measurements for me to be able to re-design the guards to exactly fit the shape of the car where it would be bolted into place. Sometimes things do'nt go quite to plan as the measurements simply were not corresponding with the shape of the real guards in the client's photos - specifically for the hole placements. We collectively decided that the best solution for the client would be to print the designs without premade holes so that the client could custom drill their own holes as needed - avoiding having to reprint it again.

2D Animation Portfolio

Corporate Explainer Video

SGCI

Working alongside the sound- and scriptwriter for this video, I created the visuals and animations for these icon-based explainer videos.

I was approached by a fellow creative for this project as they were at full capacity for this project as the script writer. Working together with the client's (SGCI) vision for the explainer video and the script writer's detail for the script and voice-overs, I created an icon-based visual narrative for this explainer video. I created icons from scratch as to convey specific ideas to the satisfaction of the client as well as maintaining brand identity through the use of colour.

With very tight time constraints in mind, I was able to identify concerns and avoid project creep within the script to keep the viseo timing to what was agreed on during the briefing session for this project.

Short Form 2D Animation

This piece was illustrated and animated by using Adobe Illustrator and After Effects.

This piece was illustrated and animated using Blender Grease Pencil (Frame By Frame Animation).

During my internship as a Personal Assistant and multimedia designer back in 2022, I created this logo animation that ended up not being used by the company. Each frame was illustrated in Clip Studio Paint and also animated in the program as well, giving the final animation an almost cut-out stop-motion-esque look.

Text Animation

Tech Jam Africa"

Tech Jam Africa approached me to create their logo animation. Based on their pre-existing 2D logo, I created a morphing animation for them while incorporating the various services they offer into their animation for them.

This logo animation uses a style what I like to call "morph-animation" where shapes transition from one to the next within the same shape. This was created using the shape-key animation technique on a few different flat vector (curve) objects within blender. For the text portion, 3D shapes were utilised alongside some deformation nodes in Blender as well. Combining 2D and 3D then makes this piece a 2.5D animation!
Please note that for this video I only worked on the visuals - the sound was created separately by a sound designer.

Below I used Blender nodes to create a cool text transition effect!

3D Animation Portfolio

3D Logo Animation

UBA - Ultimate Bush Adventurer

The business owner approached me for this project, wanting to turn his 2D logo into a rotating 3D one. I worked with him closely by setting up a consultation meeting and asking relevant questions to determine the desired project outcomes. Since most of my small business owner clients don't neccessarily know the jargon when it comes to animation, it's my job to ask the right questions and to "translate" their vision into a practical plan in order to create the final deliverable to the satisfaction of the client.

WE FEEL... WE FREAK OUT... WE CREATE!

Meet the Artist