La Fabuleuse Histoire Du Mimzo (The Fabulous Story of Mimzo) is a 3D animated adaptation of French director, art director, designer, and music composer, Neils Prayer’s, illustrated book. The story follows the journey of Mimzo, a mysterious creature who finds himself lost in the winter mountains in search of belonging. Mimzo is a piece of the night sky who, after meeting some forest friends, finally discovers where he belongs and returns home.
Taking over a year to complete, our team began development in March 2020, deciding to adapt Mimzo’s story, originally created by Neils Prayer, into an animated short as our Drexel University Animation and Visual Effects Senior Thesis, and completed this amazing project in May 2021. I served the team as a lead character modeler, rigger, and animator, and aided in various other areas as well such as visual development and post production.
Keep scrolling to find out more about my roles!
CHARACTER DESIGNER, MODELER, AND RIGGER
This was my first time modeling and rigging something with wings, so it was definitely one of my biggest challenges throughout this experience. As for the model, I was aiming to achieve a playful style with softer features and an overall rounder shape, reaching the final look After several attempts at creating the character design and 3D translation as well as retopologizing. As for the rig, the head, body, and legs are rigged similarly to a human with blend shapes controlling the facial expressions, and joints at each bend and along the spine. Driven keys and deformers are also used in various parts of the body including the head, feet, and tail feathers. The wings are where a lot of trial and error came into play. The wing bones are rigged like human arms with joints at each bend, and the feathers are separate meshes, containing individual joint chains, that are grouped at each section of the wing bone and constrained to the bone, and can be altered through wire deformers to show movement like air drag. The feathers can also be freely moved, each having individual controllers, to offer a lot of flexibility in their placement such as when the owl folds in its wings.
ANIMATOR
Below are all of the shots I animated in the short! Having only animated humans or objects, animating a round, blobby creature and animals, all of which are difficult to explicitly showcase expressions and emotions, was a new and exciting challenge. Reference footage and constant feedback were very beneficial throughout the animation process. Imagination in experimenting and problem solving was crucial to achieving the desired actions, emotions, and personality of the characters while maintaining an air of realism.
