We really should stop meeting like this, it’s like we just keep bumping into one another whenever a season of “What If…” comes out.

Truly is a coincidence that this keeps happening, it’s not like a solid chunk of my early career was spent on this show or anything. Chronologically though, this season started for me after my time at Animal Logic doing lighting on The Magician’s Elephant. I was a bit of a baby giraffe getting back in the swing of things, and honestly questioned myself quite harshly for not understanding things quicker (after all, I had done this before, why couldn’t I just do it again?). It was quite reminiscent of my first time on this show, I remember coming back home from my second day on season 1/2 feeling so overwhelmed that I cried at the dinner table, in front of my very confused and concerned family, thinking that I was wrongfully employed and very much too stupid to understand what was going on and how to do it. Some may say that that’s too harsh and some may resonate with the imposter’s syndrome that was running on a deadly hamster wheel in my brain.

Luckily I did come out of that just fine, although I’m still an artist who doubts herself too often for her liking. I definitely did when I was assigned the Apex creature for episode 1, I recall going up to my supervisor (Josh Bramley, hi Josh!) and saying, “I’m burning through the bid time on this, are you sure I should be on this task?” Only for him to reply, “Truthfully, we’re slammed with all the mechs on the episode but you got this Sam, I trust you.” He had faith in me, Zac and Mai who were both the more senior artists on the team when I started were there to help me through it and eventually, it was done. The first of my more challenging assets to come on this season. (I still definitely blew through that bid time by like 200%)

To be honest, I didn’t mean to be this candid on this little blurb, I usually like to hold onto a bit of decorum but really, this is just my love letter to this project and my team. It’s sort of ridiculous that it’s been over a year since I’ve wrapped up this project but here I am crying thinking about it all. I’m so grateful to the people I’ve met on this project, people that I still learn and gain so much wisdom from, and people who brighten my day when I see them in the studio even though we’re not on the same team or project anymore. I’d especially like to thank Josh, Zac, Mai and Caroline; people who all had leadership over me but never led me astray, always guiding me to safe and green pastures.

I’ve cut all my best hits for your enjoyment (and mine). I’d hardly say that this season was as critically acclaimed as the first one but I still love it deeply in my heart, even as I watch that shield frisbee away into the prismatic abyss. (You can too on Disney+)

Wow, deja vu. It’s almost as if it’s been two years since I spoke about season 1.

Well yes, it has been and I’m glad to be able to reflect on it now that it’s finally been released. At this point though, I’ve grown so much as an artist but I’m almost melancholic about my experiences. From the team I worked with, the style, the project and even the client; it almost feels like a simpler time and in a way it was. I was the most junior in the surfacing team with the least demanding assets. So much so that quite a few of the things that I’ve worked on were so non-consequential that they’ve been covered by lens flares and motion blurs (thus not making the final cut).

All in all, I’ve grown to appreciate and miss everything about this project. Maybe sometime soon, I’ll be able to reflect once more on season 3 whenever it releases.

I’ve included a cut of all of my somewhat visible assets, you can watch these episodes in full and in action on Disney+.

This movie was the next gig I took on between seasons 2 and 3 of What If…? and was my first foray into being a lighting artist (very exciting) and my first time working at Animal Logic.

Yet again I struggled with adapting to the look, everything in the movie was very dreamy and soft (industry buzzword - painterly) and that was also a sharp departure from my last experience of lighting in my Master’s. Eventually grew to get used to it but I think the best thing that came from this movie was the camaraderie built with the lighting team with all the annoying technical issues, over time and tea breaks.

This can be watched on Netflix but I’ve cut of all of the shots that I’ve worked on and some stills.

This show was the first job I got straight out of my Master’s in 2020 (like quite literally finishing my last day at university on Friday and starting work on Monday). It was scary, to say the least, there was a violent shift of surfacing from near realism in the Spirit short film to this extremely stylised, almost comic book-esque art style here.

It was a tough time getting to adapt at first but it has seared itself to me, almost like a second skin at this point. As a junior surfacing artist, I was mostly doing minor characters and props at the tail end of season 1 and worked my way to some secondary characters and larger props in season 2 and even main characters and entire sets in season 3. Growth, some would say.

Unfortunately, I can only share a few screenshots of the episode that I have worked on and has aired AND the trailer but hopefully, if we keep our eyes peeled on Disney+ then more will come in the future.

This major project was undertaken during my Master’s at Animal Logic Academy 2020. It all began as one would suspect with this course, we had great facilities that were a breeding ground for anxieties and artistic/technical growth. Personally speaking, it was a very intimidating environment to see artists around my age with such diverse skill sets and personal projects to show for it. I had come out of a 3D job that didn’t really have any applicable technical skills or pipelines that I could use but thankfully I was able to take the grit and experiences of working in a difficult environment with me. At this early time, I hadn’t even figured out my specialisations yet. I knew that I had wanted to try being a lighting artist at some point but that was all the way at the end of the pipeline so I was put into the surfacing department.

It was a steep learning curve but I grew to enjoy it thoroughly and took to it like a duck to water. Eventually, I was even given the responsibility of surfacing three out of five characters, which, even though very stressful, was fun and enjoyable.

I did end up in lighting as was my original goal but yet again in front of me was a mountain that was Katana. We got there at the end and I was able to pick it up despite having no prior knowledge or background in node-based programs.

It may not be something entirely impressive nor something I look at too fondly (mostly I cringe at it but that comes naturally with hindsight) but it was the pathway that threw me into surfacing and lighting and got me my first industry job.

Programs used are Substance Painter, Katana, Nuke and rendered through Renderman.

See the surfacing breakdowns featured in my reel and the short film itself down below.

So here is the first sculpt I’ve worked on since Sunflower back at Billy Blue. I initially started this back in March during my time at Animal Logic Academy for my Master's as a way to refresh on sculpting and upskill into the industry's standard of ZBrush. It started off with a sketch in my little uni notebook and I drew during a morning meeting, I gave myself a deadline of a month to get a solid head sculpted out and was going to stop it there.

My perfectionism kicked in and what I had wasn't enough, the head was pushed further and further into the snarl I have now. A floating head on its lonesome made no sense so I made a body and a little cloud (to hide the fact that I didn't want to make an entire body). The body was incredibly naked which made it look like an eel so it needed scales. Experimentation with two different techniques later, I finally settled down but then the cloud setting was letting down the rest of the piece. After banging my head against a wall for a day, I settled on a wave setting instead.

I've since textured it in Substance Painter to look like it came from a single cut of jade and rendered it out through Katana (Renderman).

Software used includes Maya 2019, ZBrush 2019, Substance Painter 2020 (Iray renders) and Katana 3.0v7 (Renderman renders).

Music credit: "TOKYO" - GC

This was a part of the Strange News Out of Hartford pitch where we needed an alien model and fast. We sought out a free alien model and came across the Alien Covenant Maya Rig by Truong CG Artist. After a day of butchering it, removing the tail and fixing it up, I then spent another day surfacing it in Substance Painter.

Original concept by Max Mitchell.

Music Credit: Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

The second semester of my Master's degree was a strange one. I was a part of the surfacing team for the short film that was in the midst of production throughout semester one. We had finished the semester strong and the team was a cohesive machine that steamrolled through assets.

Here came semester two and all production was put on halt for a battle royale of intense idea brainstorming. A cohort of 43 was shuffled around different teams for a few weeks and in our final round, before final teams and ideas would be chosen for concepting stages, Strange News Out Of Hartford was born. We had 6 weeks to get a proof of concept pitch ready for a board of panellists from the industry.

I was selected to be placed into the team as a stakeholder, a role that could've been interpreted in many ways. For some it was purely to be points of contact between the team and our leads, for others it was just a title given because they were core people to the original idea but I had subconsciously taken a leadership role for our team. I shared the role with a fellow named Tim but in the end, he was primarily occupied with the final execution of the trailer and later helped another team.

I was then left with the organisation and delegation of tasks. After seeking advice from past alumni, I was able to get the bigger picture in mind and pushed the team in the same direction. It was a very strange experience to be a small team's point of contact for everything in regards to status, how to move along, what their priorities and tasks should be, enforcing deadlines and how to fix issues. Issues and problems weren't immediately pushed to a higher up, I was the higher up that either fixed the issue or directed the issue even further up (the leads) should it be too difficult. The experience gave me insight, leadership is a direction I'd like to go in but it's something to ease into with better experience under my belt.

Alongside leading, I had taken the role as the editor. We had a running edit that would be constantly filled with new shots, new voice-overs (some done by me in my bedroom), new footage and would be tweaked for timing constantly. I had taken part in the initial storyboarding and again in the final script for the narration. The final pitch presentation was a weird collaboration where a member in my team would create it and I could only view what was happening at an extreme delay, followed by several messages of suggestions, feedback and requests.

Ultimately at the end, we didn't win with the panellists. The winning idea was chosen to actually be developed in semester 3. We did, however, win best pitch/presentation with a huge compliment from Pauline Koh (Technical Program Manager at Google) saying that the quality of our pitch was what she'd expect from her staff. (so excuse me while I scream this into the abyss)

I’m back with a personal project that started at the tail end of My Kombi Project. I was meandering through Tumblr and stumbled upon an artist under the handle of mochipanko , I was instantaneously obsessed with the vibe of her works, she somehow manages to capture those quiet, peaceful, slice of life moments that are mostly only ever seen in Japanese animated media. So I asked for her permission if I could recreate one of her artworks and thankfully, she said yes.

So off I went, challenging myself with a larger environment and balancing a 3D reinterpretation of such a flat 2D style. I faffed around in Maya, creating the scene and one thing I noticed was how hard it was to recreate something that wasn’t based on a real camera. I was limited to creating some of the weird proportions on buildings just to compensate for perspective. Many of the signs ended up being made from scratch and were referenced off of Chinese restaurant signs instead of the original’s Japanese.

Skip to 2020, I’m now a Master’s student at Animal Logic Academy (surprise!) and a cool thing that they’ve decided to do this year for my cohort was to assign Fridays as “Self-Learning Fridays”. Around the same time that this was implemented, I had started following Olof Storm and from there I broke down his processes and translated it to my own rolodex of programs at the studio. So I took it upon myself to elevate this project by taking it through Nuke and doing a parallax effect. Bear in mind, it had been 3 or so year since I’d last touched Nuke so there was some real resistance in trying to re-learn it. On top of all this, I tried my hand at 2D animation through Photoshop (not the most official or efficient way) for the smoke.

DISCLAIMER: Music used in this project does not belong to me but are copyright free.

This was a project undertaken mostly post-university graduation as a passion project. It originated from a past assessment in my second year; while being extremely ambitious then, it became a lot more fluid with the skills I had garnered by the end of my degree. I’ve included the previous incarnation of my Kombi for comparison. It was overall very satisfying exploring smooth surface modelling and a more “technically” challenging composition.

The software used includes Maya, Arnold, Premiere and After Effects.

This was a project in my last semester of university done for a client, About My Brain Institute. Software used includes Maya 2017, Mudbox 2017, Arnold, Nuke, Adobe After Effects and Premiere.

DISCLAIMER: Footage now belongs to About My Brain.

This was a collaboration animation made by my friend and I during our last semester of university. On top of animating from scratch, we were researching different techniques to emulate Disney's Meander. The software we used for this whole project includes Maya 2017, Arnold, Adobe Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop. In this project, I animated and textured the character on the left, lit and rendered both characters, used Toonshading and rotoscoped for the experiment and drew the original storyboard.

DISCLAIMER: The audio used is from a popular web series called "UnHhhh" and belongs to World Of Wonder Productions.

This project was an exploration into slightly more complex modelling and sculpting by designing an "original" creature. This includes concept art. Software used includes Maya and Mudbox 2016, Renderman, Ptex, Arnold and Photoshop.