An Evening Meal of Toadroots

The description of the Toadroots film, or synopsis to be worked as a promotion--

A rogue Magician captures his youngest audience member, a boy, whom he brings home to his family of traveling carnies. Inside their whimsical carnival wagon, they sit down for an evening meal and tell tales of their wanderlust adventures. As the boy learns of their get-rich quick schemes, his lesson is soon cut short. An uninvited Barker disrupts the evening to declare mayhem and mutiny.

An Evening Meal of Toadroots © 2015

New film poster for my short animation project that is DONE like a turkey dinner! Here is the design I came up with for its release and promotion. I will be putting together an official website to add more photos and stills of project, I'm hoping shortly.

Here is my latest title card design for the film.  I'm very stoked on Art Nouveau, thus, having to integrate this ornamental look into the scenic design.

A little inspiration from a household object found in my kids bedroom.  Blocking courtesy of a jungle lamp night-light.  Notice the cohesive form.

(Shamba the Witch) "You'll be held for ransom--unless you eat a good toadroot!"

Intro WIP

1st sequence -  pre-rendered shots of the project!  Trying to establish the tempo for some underlying music.  Animation is pretty much there, but the end of the show, climax, I'm working on at the moment.

Latest character work: cg short "An Evening Meal of Toadroots"

This is the human pincushion--He has been poked one to many times. And he resents it.

During the fine tuning of my Witch character, I had spent close to a month admiring peoples skin maps for their SSS rendering.  I figured I had to dive in and create my own!  Here are the assorted versions for the mental ray Miss shader, I will post the results later when I have the moment.

My work on the hunchback has come together.  I tested various versions of subsurface scattering in Mental Ray, but later integrated the cavity map in my diffuse slot to give it more of a stylized feel.

Here is a window I'm proud to have made. I was inspired by the art nouveau style, as well as the cool dutch inter-webs of wood between the glass windows of 18th century homes.

 Some Props for the film--all extruding polygons and lofting cv curves!

A character study I did for the animation on my "free" time. It's a bit more stylized than I can translate into 3D at the moment--but nonetheless, I love the entire oceanic style.

It's been awhile since I've posted any art work--but CG animation takes a long time.  In the process I want to post more to keep people aware of what I'm doing these days.  Here is a concept sketch to my trippy "Toadroots project."

Saturn's Return

Recent fun times with altered doll art and a heterogeneous mixture of crazy. To be used in a documentary where a person turns 30, and the planet Saturn takes approximately 29.5 years to orbit the Sun; when it returns to the exact degree along the ecliptic it occupied at the time of a person's birth. This is referred to as their "Saturn Return".

Stop Motion

A Stop Motion video I co-animated for Ecclesia Hollywood - A fundraiser called "Exchange for Change"

New Website launched -- NoahArntson.com
Please visit.

Sargon Driven Displacement

Sample to illustrate the method of Driven Displacement maps for skin moving across bone -- Various muscles examined: Mentalis and Depressor labii (Frown), Corrugator & Levator labii (Sneer), and Zygomatic Major with Risorius/platysma (Smile) to mimic the illusion of hyper-realism.

Lip Sync - Sargon III

Here is a detailed lip sync test I did to a sound bite from "Pirates of the Caribbean".

The Osipa method was used for the head rig. The original head geometry was extracted from my dense polygonal body mesh. I still yearn to make some wrinkles and scales on his face. When I get another moment, I will try to export a displacement map from Z-brush and render it in a Mental Ray approximation editor. The goal is ultra-realism.

"Sargon III" - 3D Maya

It's my creature project done after reading Alias' Hyper-Realistic Creature book.


Finally, this Lobster Man has endured the many tweaks I made for this anim. demo. I envisioned this shot as a single tableau to focus on buggy movements and some quick action. Then I realized this guy needs to have a lip-sync performance done on a separate shot! The Pan's Labyrinth movie inspired me to mimic a fairy-talesque insect creature. I hope you like it.

Rap Carnival - Gangster Prankster

Animation and Design by Noah Arntson.
All work created in Maya.