Kafkaesque

Project Brief

Kafkaesque(2023) is a 3D CGI short film inspired from Metamorphosis(1916) written by Franz Kafka, directed by Charlie O'Connor. It comes from a premise asking, 'what if the main character from Metamorphosis survived and continued living?' This film follows along the MC living his life, waking up and going to work, only to come back in an empty home all alone.

I participated in this film as a concept artist, 3D modeler, texture artist, lighting artist, environment artist, compositor and colorist.

Pre-Production

Based on the storyboard that the director provided, I suggested us to allocate some time to create a color script. I find color scripts to be very helpful throughout the entire production by providing a preliminary visual that everyone could reference from.

Quentin

I was also responsible for the character design, sculpting and texturing of Quentin, our main character. Designing a realistic bug character for our film was rather challenging, as insects were not a subject I was used to draw. I went through intensive research to figure out the anatomy and mechanisms of the beetle.

As we set june bug(may beetle) to be what Quentin is, I gathered and analyzed multiple references to understand their anatomy.

Based off the study I did, our team confirmed the character design to base off our 3D model.

Quick visualization of how furs would go on Quentin.

Fur is currently WIP to impliment this into our final version.

Based off the study I did, our team confirmed the character design to base off our 3D model.

Say Hi to Quentin!

Most recent version of Quentin(06/25). Our team plans to put this version of texture for our next version of the film.

Environment Design & Lighting

Kafkaesque is a project I am putting my skills and versatility as a 3D generalist into a challenge. My aim as a environment artist and a lighting artist is to bring the film into the cinematic visual our team visions. The color script has been extremely helpful in this process.

WIP Note (Update: July)

Our team is continuing to work to push the overall realism and quality to its limit. To name a few what we are continue doing, we are modeling & texturing more filler objects to support the storytelling and realism of the environment. I am also working on troubleshooting and learning further about Redshift with Houdini, as our team believes we could use the tool to its best to create realistic materials.