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The Cartoon City Project was a collaborative effort where each team member modeled and surfaced a unique stylized building, working together to create a vibrant, unified city environment. The goal was to take a real-world building, remodel it in 3D, and then apply deformations and exaggerated proportions to match a hand-drawn concept art style while ensuring all assets blended seamlessly into a cohesive street view.

I focused on modeling, surfacing, and optimizing a building, contributing to the city’s unique cartoon aesthetic. The process involved stylized deformation, hand-painted textures, and dynamic lighting to capture the charm of animated cityscapes.

Building Modeling & Deformation

Blocking Out:

Started with a real-world reference for scale and proportion, ensuring the initial model captured key architectural features.

Stylized Deformation:

Applied cartoonish distortions such as exaggerated angles, wavy edges, and exaggerated curves to mimic the loose, hand-drawn look of the concept art.

Texturing & Surfacing:

Created stylized, painterly textures to mimic traditional 2D animation aesthetics while keeping details clean and readable.

City Street Environment

Placed the final building into the team’s city street setup, ensuring proper scale and alignment with other stylized structures.

Helped adjust scene lighting and atmospheric depth to bring out the cartoon aesthetic, emphasizing a bright, dynamic, and fun environment.

Contributed to small environmental details, enhancing the storytelling of the scene.

The Cartoon City Project was an amazing opportunity to work in a team-based stylized environment, combining architectural design, 3D modeling, and hand-painted textures to bring a vibrant, animated world to life. This experience helped me refine my ability to balance realism with artistic exaggeration while collaborating with others to create a cohesive cityscape.
Credits –

Vito Yang

Andres Ruiz

Daniela Rea

Jay Son

Joseph

Nathan Cook