Hello Friends!
My name is Alexey Kashpersky, I am Creative Director in the VFX storytelling company. And this is Tamerlan - Albino supercrimson iguana. One of the rarest artificially created iguana morphs and quite a personality by himself :)
Table of Contents
They say -The artist would not be able to create his art if the child had not continued to exist inside him. Inside a fully-grown person.
This short film I am working on is a kid inside me dreaming out loud. I want to tell the story of the human and animal bond as if there was a way to introduce just a little bit of magic in our real world.
The scope of work to be done is HUGE. From scriptwriting and plot to character developing and storyboarding.
From concepting the filming location on paper to its 3D modeling, detailing, thinking through weather, water, atmosphere, foliage and implementing everything in Unreal Engine, so later real life cameras can be motion tracked to a virtual fantasy world.
From creating the human and dragon characters and their features on paper as sketches, thinking through their "magic abilities", to re-creating their "digital twins", sculpting them in ZBrush and finally to real-life camera acting and seamlessly combining both digital and real worlds in one piece.
From dedicating the whole room in the house being a chroma-key location with all necessary lights and wind simulator setups to a real-life shooting props construction. Which is pretty much a separate workshop.
THINGS we can be proud of right now!
- Draguana Proof of Concept still images.
- Animated draft version of the wings composited with live video. (20+ mil. views on social media)
- Flying test of the Draguan on top of the drone footage. (6 mil. views on social media)
- 10 months long journey on creating the 3D model.
- First flying animation and real life footage compositing test.
Ways to SUPPORT the project
-- Make a sponsor subscription to @dragon.and.me on Instagram or Patreon.
-- Order merch from our online store.
-- If you would like to join our team please DM me on instagram or email at shinytamerlan@gmail.com
Our TEAM
For now we are a small team of enthusiasts, and everything here is created with our own hands, from scratch, during the after work hours.
I understand that with current resources we are pretty limited. But they say “-Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Sounds like a plan to me! :))
Currently we are:
Alexey Kashpersky - Creative Director, 3D modeling
Jason Snyman and Nina Fischer - 3D animation wizards from GOT Team
Hai-Tao Wu - Director of Photography, x2 Emmy Award winner
Truong - Rigging and skinning
Elena Kashpersky - 2D concepting, Storyboarding, Makeup
Special thanks:
Jonathan Symmonds - Sophoria Academy co-founder
Dominika Jandlová - Model, actress
Work In PROGRESS materials
Software we use:
- ZBrush (3D Modeling)
- Mari, Substance (Texturing)
- Maya (Scene setup, rigging)
- Cinema 4D (Scene setup, rigging)
- Redshift (Render)
- Unreal Engine (Cinematics production, Environments)
- AfterEffects, Photoshop (Compositing)
Work in Progress Video Links:
- Dragon and Me Shortfilm Announcement
- Dragon Egg 3D printing and Chroma-key painting
- Draguan eye video update
- Reptile Eye 3D Making Of - Sculpting and Animating
- Shortfilm - Production update 01
- Shortfilm update // Just got back from Hollywood!
- Draguana first animation test | No textures
- Draguana render with textures. Maya/Redshift
- Draguan 3D model creation. 10mo in 10 minutes
- Fixing dragon wing membrane intersection. Maya / Proximity Warp
- Draguana CloudSurfing - WIP :: MAYA/Redshift
Iguana reference pack for Artists (free)
As a thank you for all the help I received from our Art Community while working on the project, I am sharing all 500+ high resolution iguana reptile photo references.
Link to download: Iguana Lizard muscles, skin and Scales reference pack for Artists
I hope this helps someone create outstanding and realistic creatures!
Stay tuned, follow @dragon.and.me on instagram for daily updates!