Steve Eisenmann 2018 Animation Show Reel

Lighting responsibilities for these shots included character and environment lighting, and final composite. I created several special refraction distortion shaders to mimic refractions in the water pipe. They were used to artistically distort the character and add directable caustics in the water. To render the glass cleanly, I baked the environment out this, allowing very fast renders. For the final part of the reveal, I adjusted my light rig to cause a lamp to reflect in the character’s glasses, which produced the impression of eyes

Lighting responsibilities included character, environment, and final composite. The environment was split into three still renders and used as cards in nuke. This allowed me to focus on the characters and keep render times down. I created a hair setup that traced the full visible hair to a low resolution set of hair and geo, this helped speed up the renders and reduce noise. For lighting, I used an environment hdr, and character key and fill lights. Most of my time on lighting was spent finding a good position for the light on the hotdog “Barry’s” face.

Lighting responsibilities included
character, environment, and final
composite. I had to carefully place
many lights to get good shaping on
the character without making him
appear overly lit. Another task was
making an art directable highlight
for the axe that fell from its hooks.

Lighting responsibilities included
character, environment, and final
composite. Special attention was
given to make sure lighting
accented all character beats
without being intrusive. Flashing
light was timed per shot to keep
the sequence feeling consistent
without being overbearing.

Lighting responsibilities included
character, environment, and final
composite. Special attention was
given to make sure lighting
accented all character beats
without feeling intrusive. Animated
lighting was adjusted per shot.

Environment lighting responsibilities
for these opening shots
consisted of lighting design and
addressing lighting notes. Render
management obligations included
optimizing the shot for rendering to
ensure elements functioned
properly and separated into logical
pieces for reassembly in
compositing. My role involved
frequent communication with
leads, FX and compositing
departments.

Character lighting responsibilities
on these shots were to set up the
lighting, match both the plate and
surrounding shots for consistency.
Extra care and attention was given
to eye lighting. Each shot had
custom painted environment maps
and directed eye highlights.
Additional responsibilities included
addressing notes, and debugging
rendering issues. Ongoing
collaboration with leads and
compositors insured that the best
passes and mattes were used for
compositing.

Reel shots are shown in movie
sequence order. Tasks included
modifiying an existing tool to
create art directable reflections
and specular hits for the
pocketknife to satisfy notes from
the client.

Shots 19 and 20 were selected as
hero shots to match for lighting. A
unique challenge in this sequence
was to create animated, colored
gobo lights for close up shots that
matched the characteristics and
timing of lights used on the set.