"YUKA" is an animated short film made by the Production Studio II class in 2020. It is a hybrid 2D-3D project that showcases the talents of 17 individuals who combined their skills together to work together. With the original story by Blair, Jaylinn and Evan, and overseen by the production studio's manager Jaina, the class was split up into different teams to work on the 2D and 3D animated assets, as well as motion graphics and video-editing. As the head of the 2D department, I worked as one of the main character concept artists as well as being an animator and 2D puppet-rigger. Original concept art was created by Blair, and below are the concept art and turnaround sheets I have made for the project!
YUKA tells the legend of a group of four powerful sorcerers: the three witches Althea, Meliae, and Sirena and the wizard Zuma, who controlled the elements. Long ago, they gave up a portion of their power in the form of elemental orbs that would allow the Earth to prosper. One day, the wizard took back his elemental orb and disappeared, causing the Earth to turn into a barren and cold wasteland...
A century later, a girl named Yuka is born. Blessed by the witches, she is determined to find Zuma and bring heat back to the planet.
For style consistency, the 2D team decided the best course of action would be use 2D puppet-rigs across all of the hand-drawn shots. I was in charge of creating the base rigs for all of the main characters which the 2D team would edit and manipulate in After Effects and Adobe Animate. All of the current assets I have developed were drawn in Clip Studio Paint.
Below are the shots I worked on.