Lived-in sci-fi
Visual inspiration included Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Dune, The Wild Robot, Robotech, The Mitchells vs. the Machines, and Arcane, with an emphasis on painted textures and weathered surfaces.
SHORT FILM
Cleared For Takeoff
A spacefaring mother’s piloting accident left her son permanently injured as a child, and she must now decide whether he's ready to fly the family ship as a teenager.
Developed with special project mentorship from Academy Award-nominated writer/director John Musker.
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Pre-Production
Moodboards & Style Direction
The world was designed as a lived-in, painted sci-fi environment, pulling from animated and cinematic references while keeping the family story warm and grounded.
Warm vs. cool
The mother was developed around warmer tones, while Leo leaned cooler. The contrast helped separate their personalities while keeping them visually connected as family.
Cozy interiors, vast exteriors
Interior lighting was conceived as warm, ambient, and darker than the exterior, while the outdoor world leaned toward dawn and dusk naturalism.
Character Design — Leo
Leo evolved from a more formal, militaristic pilot design into a younger, more casual character. Story revisions later added his prosthetic arm and clarified the shapes for 3D modeling.
Color Exploration
Early clothing color concepts
The more regal version felt too official, so the more familiar, appealing palette became the stronger direction.
Turnaround
Design revisions for production
The first turnaround depicts an older Leo without the prosthetic arm. A later story revision made him slightly younger, added the prosthetic, changed the footwear, and simplified the line work for modeling.
Prosthetic Arm
Robot arm design
Possible arm designs were explored before settling on the finalized robot arm design used for Leo.
Ship Design · 09.09.2025
Creating a transforming ship design
These were different ship designs. We wanted something that could modify mid-flight, so we ultimately settled on the wing contraption.
Story Development
Early Rough Story Beats
Early key-beat drawings from February 19, 2025 helped establish the accident, Leo and his mother’s relationship, the family ship, and the emotional shape of the story before full storyboarding.
Story Development
Storyboards
Three dated passes show how the staging and emotional beats developed. Click any panel to inspect it full-size.
Production
Shot Tracking
Keeping 113 shots organized
We needed an intuitive, simple, and organized system of tracking our 113 shots during the production process, so I created a master spreadsheet. It included tabs for shot name, difficulty level, description, frame count, etc. and provided a clear visual representation of the progress we had made on our film.
3D Development · 03.22.2025
Older Leo — early modeling
Older Leo’s head was sculpted in Blender and retopologized in Maya. The hair shown here was an early model that was later replaced with an improved version.
Ship Modeling
Building a tactile, simple spacecraft
These process images show the ship taking shape in 3D. We wanted the design to have a tactile, simple feel while preserving the transforming wing mechanism developed in pre-production.
Animation
Selected animation playblasts
These are a couple of playblasts of shots that I animated!
Lighting Test · 03.30.2026
Early lighting look development
An early lighting test exploring subsurface scattering, textures, and eye bounce light.
Lighting
Final Lighting
Here are some of the shots I was responsible for lighting! Lighting was done in Arnold.
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Post-Production
I completed the film’s sound design in Pro Tools, then handled final color correction and compositing in After Effects, including light flares and Houdini simulations.