Sarah Johnston

Mellow

Bachelor of Design 3D animation Character Animation Environmental Storytelling Motion Capture Moving Image Visual Effects Ecology and Sustainability Narrative Performance Science Fiction

AD21 Award

Head of School and Animation Team Project Award

For outstanding academic performance in Digital Design and outstanding achievement in an Animation team project

'Mellow' is a reference to the protagonist Holly's meek personality and traits that she must learn to overcome. It is also a homophone of a flower-like weed, the 'Mallow', which can be seen in the film.

"Mellow" tells the story of an anxious young researcher named Holly who breaks away from her reliance on external authority. Holly finds her own self-confidence after she is required to kill a lizard-like creature that supposedly threatens the bird-like creatures she is tasked to research.

This project was created by Jaimee Burk and me (Sarah Johnston).

As there are two unique creatures featured in our film, Jaimee Burk and I each took responsibility for one of them. We designed them together and then individually took them through the rest of the animation pipeline. We each had our own challenging component to incorporate.

For Jaimee, it was the muscle simulation on the lizard-creature through the use of the simulation software Ziva Dynamics. For me, it was the feather simulation and rigging of the bird creature, which required me to explore many paths to find a solution. This type of rigging and simulation are definitely things I would like to learn more about in the future.