TIMVAN

DIGITAL PRODUCTION SPECIALIST

WHO EVER WOULD HAVE EVER THOUGHT TO MIX SNOOP DOGG AND LARRY DAVID INTO ONE CHARACTER?

In this project, I collaborated with Jesse Wellens and James Defina to create a spoof of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm TV show, featuring a new character called Larry Dogg. Snoop Dogg loved the idea and greenlit it alongside his NFT collection, "Astro Donuts". I generated 500,000 unique artworks for the Astro Project NFT project, with 11,111 pieces available for public minting on Opensea. Additionally, I joined the Unreal Engine team as lead VFX artist, working on various aspects like simulations, rigging cars, material blueprints, and troubleshooting in UE5. I also created and rigged key assets including Snoop Dogg's blunt, burrito, donuts and artwork for the food trucks. To leverage a more time-efficient workflow in Unreal Engine, we made use of Epic Games' Metahuman rigs and Astro Project's in-house Vicon motion capture system. The custom characters were pose-morphed from Metahuman rigs and the Vicon captures were retargeted to the Metahuman skeletal meshes. Throughout this project, I gained extensive knowledge in the Unreal Engine pipeline. It has been an exciting experience, and I'm thrilled to be part of Astro Project's early beginnings. Looking forward to the growth and evolution of James and Jesse's company and hopeful for future exciting projects together.

PROJECT ROLES

SIMULATION

• Pyro simulation of the food truck explosion

ASSET CREATION

• 3D modeling and texturing of Snoop's blunt, burrito, the donuts, as well as branding of the food trucks.

RIGGING

• Car rig and animation of the Lincoln in the drive through scene as well as miscellaneous maya -> unreal engine pipeline support.

GENERATIVE ART

• I was given the challenge of creating 10,000 unique renders of donuts, with varying traits from the donut skin itself, to the frosting and sprinkles. I ended up creating 500,000 unique pieces of art in a month timeline.