"Coffee For Librarians" came from a challenge I gave to myself: to produce a fully CG video in a short time span. As part of the hiring process for my current role as a Social Media Associate, I was asked to submit a 15-60 second video that could work as an Instagram reel. From there, I landed on the idea of creating a brand of coffee made by and for librarians (since I was applying to Kenton County Public Library).
I really wish this brand was real, because coffee would have really helped me along the process of completing an advertisement from scratch over a long-weekend. The project took between 25-30 hours of work from modeling, texturing, and creating the brand imagery of the cans to lighting, animating, compositing, and editing everything together.
This project tested my knowledge of many programs. The bulk of the work happened in Blender, but I also used After Effects and Premiere for the editing and post-processing portion. I had hoped to even create my own music for this ad, and maybe I'll do that in the future if I ever come back to this project.
This is one of the first projects I've made where I went through the full VFX workflow, from planning to post-production. It helped to give me an understanding of this process from a bird's eye view, whereas other projects help me tackle a specific area, such as modeling or texture-painting. Looking back on the final result, I can't help but think of ways that this could be improved, but that tendency is all part of the creative process. I think of this as a good thing - if I can't find critiques in my past work, then how can I improve? In the end, this was a project that pushed what I was capable of and made me a better artist.