Grace Projects

The Kraken’s Tooth

Over two semesters in Animation Lab, I worked as a surfacing and technical artist on the animated short The Kraken’s Tooth. I helped develop the surfacing style, supported other surfacing artists as they joined the team, and created scripts to streamline parts of the pipeline.

During the first few weeks, we experimented with art styles to find one that fit the tone of the short. Our main inspiration was the 2D video game Don’t Starve. We wanted to bring its scratchy linework and watercolor feel into a 3D environment.

These images are reference artwork from Don’t Starve and its official animations, used as inspiration for the style.

Don’t Starve promotional artwork showing a character holding a torch in a purple forest beside the Giant Edition title. — Don’t Starve game artwork: scratchy outlines and a muted purple palette.

Official Don’t Starve animation artwork of two characters against a cloudy, watercolor-like background. — Official Don’t Starve animation reference: hand-drawn shapes and watercolor texture.

Don’t Starve reference artwork showing characters gathered around a tree in a warm yellow and brown environment. — Don’t Starve reference artwork: textured color and expressive linework across an environment.

Translating that 2D style to 3D took a lot of testing. These initial surfacing tests were not final, but they helped shape the hand-drawn feel we were looking for.

A tapered purple 3D form with black outlines and long, hand-drawn lines across its surface. — An early test using drawn lines to describe the surface of a 3D asset.

The same tapered purple form with a rougher, densely scratched texture and dark outlines. — Another early surfacing test with a rougher, scratchier texture.

A purple 3D cube with uneven black outlines and mottled, watercolor-like color on each face. — An initial cube test combining painted color with hand-drawn edges.

After the initial tests, we settled on a more consistent art style. Each asset still took multiple iterations to get right. I also had to consider render times: rendering calculates how light interacts with the assets to turn a 3D scene into a final image, and the materials we chose affected how long that process took.

For this glass bottle background asset, the first version was too bright for the aesthetic and took too long to render. The second version matched the mood and rendered efficiently, but it did not look like glass. The final version kept the glass appearance without slowing down render times.

The first bottle iteration, a bright pink and purple glass bottle with a rounded base and cork stopper. — First iteration: too bright for the scene and too slow to render.

The second bottle iteration with a dark reddish-brown, scratched surface and a textured cork. — Second iteration: the mood and render time worked, but the material did not read as glass.

The final bottle iteration with a dark green glass surface, soft highlights, and a cork stopper. — Final iteration: a glass appearance with efficient render times.

I also worked through iterations of an advertisement for the treasure hunt the protagonists go on. The earliest version had no map. We decided to add a dotted route and landmarks to give the audience some foreshadowing of the journey to come.

An early treasure-hunt advertisement on a torn sign, with Big Prize Big Money lettering and a treasure chest but no route map. — The early advertisement focused on the prize, without a map.

A revised treasure-hunt advertisement with a dotted route connecting a boat, coral, a sea creature, a skull, and the treasure chest. — Adding a map introduced landmarks from the journey.

The final treasure-hunt advertisement with the illustrated dotted route and a more defined outline around the torn map. — A later iteration refined the map’s border while keeping the route visible.

When I returned for the second semester, I helped train newer surfacing artists. I helped create a style guide and provided detailed instructions so they could understand and work within the style we had established.

We also needed to change certain attributes across every asset passing through the surfacing team. I took the initiative to write scripts that made those bulk changes faster.