More than eight million metric tons of plastic waste (bags, bottles, packaging, and more) end up in the oceans each year according to Science magazine. To raise awareness about this pollution crisis and help people understand the impact on marine life, five students from the MoPA School of Computer Graphic Animation in Arles, France, created a 3D animated film, called Hybrids. The film depicts an amazing ocean world that imagines how sea creatures might adapt to the polluted environment. Hybrids won over audiences and won numerous awards and helped the five team members launch their careers in the visual effects industry.puretaboo
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A student project with an environmental focus
As MoPA students, the five Hybrids co-directors had committed to a rigorous five-year program studying the art and technology of computer graphics and animation. For their final graduation project, Florian Brauch, Matthieu Pujol, Kim Tailhades, Yohan Thirion, and Romain Thirion came together with their complementary skills and interests to create a short film. “Each of us had our own strengths in different fields,” says Pujol. “Florian was the animator, for example, and I was the effects artist. We had a lighting artist [Tailhades], a compositing artist [Thirion], and also an animator and rigger [Thireau].”net video girls

The students quickly identified a compelling theme to showcase in their graduate films. “Four of us grew up by the sea, and that’s why we chose the theme of pollution,” says Brauch. “The idea came from Romain, who is from Cannes in the south of France.” He used to dive to look at underwater animals. As time went by, he noticed fewer and fewer fish and more and more garbage. “Every time I saw something shiny buried in the sand, thinking it was an interesting life form, it turned out to be a bottle cap.”

Once the team members settled on the idea of hybrids, they began developing the characters for the film’s cast. “We started with some of the most iconic underwater creatures,” says Pujol. For each character – shark, grouper, crab, turtle, vulture – the team members found a specific personality and matched it with the garbage, which would help it adapt to survive. The grouper, for example, was fused with a fused oil drum in its bulky, rounded shape.

Once the designs were established, the team sculpted 3D versions of the characters in ZBrush, then used Autodesk Maya to manipulate and animate them. The creatures were textured with Substance Painter to blend flesh with non-organic objects. “We wanted to show the pain and suffering in that, something that is far from a fairy tale,” Pujol explains. “It was about textures.” Iterating quickly, the team tested various character interactions: grouper attacking turtle, shark attacking turtle. To find the flow of the movie, they realized they had to go to the preview quickly. “We needed to be able to see the film, feel the timing, the framing of all the shots, the animation, to make sure it was working,” he says.

The film has screened at 97 festivals around the world, winning 30 awards, including Best in Show at SIGGRAPH 2018 and Best Environmental Film at the Interfilm Berlin 2018 International Short Film Festival. With a win at the Sitges Film Festival in Spain. In addition, Hybrids was nominated for the 91st Academy Awards in the Best Animated Short Film category. The film has been acquired for broadcast on French public television.

Audience reception has also been gratifying: “They responded even better than we expected,” says Pujol. “We received many emails from divers telling us that they connected with our film. We’re very happy that the film is making people aware of ocean pollution.”

Today, every member of the team is employed in the industry. In Montreal, Pujol is doing effects at DNEG, and Brauch is an animator at Framestore. Thirion is in London working as a concept artist for Electric Theatre Collective. In Paris, Tailhades is working on environment and rendering for games at Unit Image, and Thireau is working on an animated film at Prima Linea Productions. “We learned that in the end, if you’re passionate about what you do, people will listen to you,” Brauch says. new porn sites maturescam my tranny cams