THE BIG CHEESE
Summer 2013
“In a colorful world where pro-cheese culture prevails, a lactose-intolerant mouse named Gollum receives a surprise visitor: Smeagol, a friendly mouse who loves cheese.
How will their story end?”
3D CGI film, 2013.
My team of 6 high school and college students from Summer Academy for Advancing the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Computing and I created the 3 min. animated short THE BIG CHEESE in 8 weeks. I storyboarded the beat sheet, manipulated lighting of the environment, drew art assets, and animated characters Smeagol and Gollum.
THE BIG CHEESE was selected to screen at the 2014 Seattle Deaf Film Festival, attended by more than a hundred d/Deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing patrons.
You can read more about Summer Academy in UW News. Summer Academy was generously supported by AccessComputing, DO-IT, University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering, Google, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and The Johnson Scholarship Foundation. I am forever grateful to them for providing a wonderful learning experience that broadened my horizons of my artistic creativity, technical knowledge, and understanding of Deaf culture.
Role: Storyboard Artist, Lighting Artist, Character Animator
Team: Jessie, Abraham, Brennan, Brian, Arber
Tools: Autodesk Maya, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop
Examples of Work
Prior to THE BIG CHEESE, I experimented with the animation pipeline in Autodesk Maya. The video shows all students’ work and includes my selected work, captured in screenshots below the video. I explored modeling, texture, and lighting.
