Litter Pecker
​In this mockumentary, we meet John, a litter-picking pigeon who’s just been promoted. John values work more than anything else, but it's not just a job - it's his passion. He is a proud artist in his spare time, creating sculptures with the litter he finds. Some may view John’s lifestyle as mundane, but he sees the beauty in everything and is content with his little life as a litter picker.
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This film was a primarily solo project made in my final year at University. It received two Craft Awards for Writing and Editing at the West of England RTS Student Awards. I was involved in all aspects of the pipeline from concept to completion. Scroll down to see some of the process.
Texturing
I created my textures by hand painting the UV maps with acrylic paint. I then used Substance Painter to connect the seams and add Specular and height. This was a process I thoroughly enjoyed as it was nice to step away from the computer and go back to my roots as a painter and I'm verry happy with the way they turned out
Lighting and Rendering
I did the lighting in Maya using HDRIs, among other lights, then rendered in Arnold. I used AOVs and render layers so that the layers could be easily tweaked in comp.
Compositing
I did the compositing in After Effects which was a fairly simple process as the key thing was getting the lighting and position of the render right. I thoroughly enjoyed using After Effects as I found it to be a highly intuitive programme. I look forward to using it more in the future.
Render and compositing test. I used the chicken toy as a lighting and shadow reference
