The Wizard’s
study
3d Animation
The Wizard’s Study was a short animation created as part of a small animation jam.
Timeline
2 weeks
Tools
Photoshop, premier pro, Maya
N/A
Client
2023
Year
The Brief
The goal was to develop a scene that told a story in under 2 minutes. Created in 2 weeks, the project tested my ability to ideate, produce assets, animate, and render out a scene in a short period of time.
The Solution
I needed to identify a setting that would be broad enough to contain a story within it, but not so broad that it would blow the project’s scope beyond my allotted time.
I eventually settled on this idea of a wizard’s study. This is because a study–the place where you choose to seclude yourself for your own personal work and hobbies–is a deeply personal area. Anything placed within that room, and even how it was arranged, would be its own little look into the life of whoever used it; it’s own little story.
Deliverables
MP4 video
Original Maya Scene
Asset Creation
Using Maya’s robust modeling capabilities, I was able to easily create my objects for the room. Creating them each in their own individual files before later importing them all into one scene for assembly allowed me to keep a clean project structure and make easy adjustments to each model without picking through the entire scene.
Scene Assembly
When conceptualizing the camera setup, my goal was to immerse the viewer in a captivating first-person perspective, allowing them to experience the room as if they were physically present. To achieve this, meticulous attention was dedicated to crafting the camera movements, ensuring they authentically mimicked the organic sways and readjustments one might make while exploring a space.
Afterwards, I was satisfied. I rendered the scene out before assembling it with audio inside of Adobe Premier.
Reflections
This project challenged me to think like a storyteller and a technical artist under pressure. With only two minutes to work in, I had to distill a narrative down to its essentials and communicate it entirely through environment, composition, and camera movement rather than dialogue or character animation. The wizard’s study became a visual shorthand for its owner—layered props, lighting, and spatial choices were all intentional, meant to imply history, habits, and quiet tension within a single room.