The Monkey King & The Immortal Peach

Obsidian the Derezzer FIN

Final version of Obsidian:

Early Obsidian Composite & Render

Playing around with some MatCaps in Zbrush for Obsidian the Derezzer concept. Still at an early stage for modeling:


Here's an early full body render as a progress update:

Monkey King Test Renders

Checking lighting on the leaves, warm light on the Monkey King and cool light on the Tree:




Lighting Test for this scene where the Monkey King decides to hop up the tree to get the Immortal Peach:



Test Render of the Peach (I want an illumination from inside, but not BLASTING with light):

Monkey King Storyboards

First Storyboard:

This board pointed out my broad scope by introducing another character. Also, when this board was shown to other people, half of them got the monkey poop joke while the other half did not.

Additionally, there's not motivation for the monkey to feel remorse and (what seems to be) returning the peach tree. So back to the drawing board for clarity and more bang for my buck.


Second Storyboard:

In this one, this become more about the Peach Tree than the Monkey King's story. While the audience I showed this board to were entertained, when the overall reaction was "Awww..." at the end, that was not my goal. So back to the drawing board.


Third Storyboard:

Now we're getting somewhere with this board. The word cards seemed jarring and the other option was to add dialogue (adding the responsibility to record and animate the mouth to match the voice). Given the time budget, I opted to take another whack at another board.


Final Storyboard:

With this one, I felt confident that I was getting it to where it needed to be given the man hours I have budgeted and clarity in storytelling beats. This board has more drawings because I used it to work out the animatic.

Monkey King Concept & Render

Here is the original Character Sheet Concept Art for the Monkey King:


And here is the Character Sheet with Render of the Monkey King: