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Tala

Character Creation Project

Responsible for all aspects

Creation

Tala's body, clothes, and hair were modeled purely in Autodesk Maya. All texturing was done Adobe Substance 3D Painter, except the patchwork star, which was a custom asset made in Substance 3D Assets.
Rigging was done in Maya with the help of the Advanced Skeleton 5 plug-in. The skirt, however was a custom rig using a lattice to deform the geometry. The shot was animated in Maya and lit in Maya with Arnold.

TalaDesign_edited.jpg

About

In my sophomore year, we spend the second semester on creating a character. My professor, Richard Kim, told us that we were to create a character that could fit in a children's show. It didn't have to be a human, but it should be a biped with a face and fingers.
Around this time, I had started to learn Chinese from some of my fellow students, but there was no easy way for me to learn my mother's language, Tagalog. This lead me to think that it would've been helpful when I was growing up to have a TV show like Dora the Explorer to help me learn at a young age.
Consequentially, the character I decided to create was to be the protagonist of such a show. Her name is Tala, which means "star" in Tagalog. Her clothes are modeled after a school uniform typical of the Philippines and her entire outfit is made up of the colors of the Filipino flag: red, blue, white, and yellow. The star on her pocket references the stars on the flag as well as her name.
 

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