Ciúnas

Ciúnas (2025) Official Trailer

YouTube link of full film coming soon!

Awards

1st Place - Communications and Media 4

Ohio University 2025 Student EXPO

2025 Director's Award

Ohio University Scripps College of Communication
Awarded for work on Ciúnas and impact on the School of Media Arts and Studies.

About My Project

My project is a high fantasy 3D animation that touches on the topics of Celtic folklore and mythology, historic locations, and sign language in small communities which is a culmination of my studies at Ohio University. The story is based around the Beltany Circle, located in Raphoe Ireland. The main character is Deaf and she lives in a small town where everyone signs, no matter their hearing capability. Due to the location, I will be using my knowledge in signed languages, and help from the Deaf Society of Ireland, to effectively execute Irish Signed Language.

Character Designs

When developing my characters, I went through a variety of processes. After finding initial research with The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore by Patricia Monaghan, I mapped out each personality with a character diamond exercise. Next, I developed each character's physical design, considering research on historic clothing, time period, and location. Finally, each character received a full magic breakdown which was completed with help from The Ultimate RPG Game Master's Worldbuilding Guide by James D'amato. Many of this story's magical dynamics come from the Dungeons and Dragons systems.

3D Character Models

My characters have all been designed in Autodesk Maya. I first use Autodesk Character Generator to create a base body mesh, and then once imported into Autodesk Maya, I design clothes to be attached to each mesh. These character meshes come with rigged skeletons, to which I make character definitions in Maya. With the clothing models I have applied NCloth, a cloth dynamic plug-in in Maya, to make many of the clothing pieces fall like real clothing. Each set of clothing is optimized and connected to the base mesh, so the clothing will move fluidly with the body.

Environmental Assets

All of my environmental assets are done in Autodesk Maya. I combined free assets I found online with my own 3D models done from scratch. I then applied my own textures to the models using Substance Painter. The scenes are also optimized to make rendering quick, to allow for more complicated animation to occur within them. These Autodesk Maya workspaces are made so I can drag and drop my character files right into each scene.

Storyboard / Animatic

This film consists of 16 short scenes and a total of around 247 shots. Based on the animatic, the short film will range from ten minutes to fifteen minutes. The animatic lacks audio due to the fact a majority of the film will be silent and from the Deaf character's perspective. When the film was finalized, many of these shots were changed or rearranged. The film also ended up being much longer as well.

Behind the Scenes

This film took a total of more than two years to complete. Months of pre-production of completing scripts, storyboards, shot lists, and assets. Even more time was spent with myself and actors in the motion capture suit recording data for the characters. After the recording, I had to put all the pieces together in my 3D animation software. After even more months of animating, and many weeks of post-production, the 17 minute long film was completed. Here is a look behind the scenes at my workflow!

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