The ocean scene is comprised of an underwater creature, or “Leviathan,” and a dinghy life raft vessel. The leviathan required many separate rigging layers, while the dinghy required a combination of rigging techniques and cloth simulation systems. The Leviathan character references various aspects of whales, sharks, fish, alligators, and exotic aquatic life found in the abyssal regions of the vast oceans. The goal of this creature study was not to create a wholly original animal, but rather to understand how various anatomy systems could potentially be fused together and work in conjunction with one another. Various shark and alligator species formed the primary basis of the character. These also acted as the primary action references. Due to the theoretical nature of this creature, basic movement and swim cycles needed to be highly improvised. Through a collaboration between the Discovery Channel and the University of Miami, a live blacktip shark was captured, scanned, and animated into a community resource. This acted as a solid foundation to base the Leviathan’s movements on. The rig for this character is primarily based on an IK spline system. There are several of these in place along the body. IK chains comprise most of the secondary and tertiary systems. Various layered controls are in place for both large, sweeping actions and minute detail animating. Expressions and shared influences are heavily utilized to achieve seamless interactions between the different systems in place. Texture baking played a large part in the design process for the Leviathan. I worked on high-level detail design on a mesh consisting of approximately 24 million faces. This was in turn baked down to only 82K faces in total. I worked in reverse in terms of the typical retopology process. I created a low-poly version and created all the seams on that version. I then upscaled the poly count where needed to achieve the desired mesh density for general mesh sculpting work. I later upscaled the density again to achieve fine detail sculpting. Following this process meant that I could avoid the traditional, tedious nature of re-topologizing altogether. All I needed to do was incorporate some forward thinking into the initial topology flow of the model. Most of the Leviathan character is comprised of hand-painted textures. The sole exception being the eyes. Those were created as a reusable and fully customizable asset for any future endeavors. The hand-painted textures are, admittedly, less detailed than I would have desired. This can be attributed to several factors. Chief among these are hardware limitations and lack of access to expensive, professional software. Having said that, this could very well be an error in technique as well. I was trained in Autodesk software and needed to relearn my skills in open-source tools like Blender. Having a strong foundational knowledge base has alleviated much of the strain in regards to this process. Attempting to learn many new tools, remove the rust on my skill base, and build a new portfolio from scratch required many hours of perseverance and study.​​