Between March and April 2025, during my internship at Monogrid, I had the opportunity to develop an internal R&D project exploring the interaction between digital surfaces and organic movement.

This piece is the result of a complete creative and technical process, from concept to final render, where I focused on modeling, rigging, texturing, lighting, shading, and animation — mainly in Blender, but also using industry-standard tools for sculpting, texturing, and cloth design.

My contributions included:

• Pre-production (with Carolina Ronchi)
• Iguana sculpt (ZBrush) & retopology (Blender)
• Iguana textures (Substance Painter)
• Jacket modeling (Marvelous Designer) & textures (Substance Painter)
• Lighting, shading, Dynamic Paint VFX, rig & animation (Blender)

Credits:

• 3D Design, Sculpt, Texturing, Rigging, Animation, VFX — myself
• Simulation (jacket) & Post-production — Rudy Faletra
• Pre-production — Carolina Ronchi and myself

— Work in Progress —

This marks my most ambitious animation project to date—and my first with a human character. It’s a visual homage to my brother, a jazz pianist who inspires the creative narrative: a sleepy morning, a stumble, a groove ignited, and a new song begins.

Developed between pre-production in late 2024 and completion of this first segment in June 2025, I led the entire production pipeline, encompassing:

• Environment & Character Design
• High- and mid-poly modeling (Maya, ZBrush)
• Texturing (Substance Painter)
• Clothing and cloth simulation (Marvelous Designer)
• Rigging and animation (Maya)
• Lighting, VFX, and rendering (Unreal Engine 5)
• Post-production (After Effects)

The most complex challenge so far has been crafting a believable human rig and clothing dynamics. This one-minute segment is only the beginning—I plan to complete the full short to further sharpen my skills in character animation, storytelling, and environment craft.

🐌
This project marked a new phase in my animation journey.
I created it in March 2024 as part of an exercise for my 3D course at Mohole school. The assignment was to build an environment in Unreal Engine 5 and present it through animated camera movements.
I decided to go further by adding an animated subject: a snail—a quiet protagonist for this small, moody world.

After animating rigid mechanical characters (like the Pixar lamp), this was my first time exploring soft-body deformation in animation.
The snail’s slow, effortful movement represents resilience, persistence, and survival in a damp environment, right after a storm.

Although the main goal was to explore Unreal, I used the full traditional animation pipeline to create the snail:
• ZBrush – sculpting
• Maya – retopology, rig, and animation
• Substance Painter – texturing
• Unreal Engine 5 – lighting, environment, and rendering

Realism wasn’t the priority—atmosphere was. I tried to evoke a sense of suspended calm, where even a tiny creature could feel emotionally present.

🌲✨ Twin Peaks has always fascinated me with its unique atmosphere blending nostalgia, unease and surreal horror. When we were asked to reinterpret the intro of a TV series for our final 3D exam at Accademia di Brera, choosing this title felt inevitable.

In January 2023, together with Elisa Peruch, I created this concept for an alternate opening sequence.
It was my first time approaching 3D animation seriously, handling keyframes, timing and curves entirely in Blender, with compositing and editing in After Effects.

This project challenged me to grow quickly, both technically and creatively, and it remains one of the most formative experiences in my learning journey.

🌟 More than a technical exercise, it was about capturing the soul of Twin Peaks — that special mix of melancholy, mystery, and quiet dread.
👉 You can watch the full version here:

This was the very first animation exercise I completed during the second year of the 3D animation course at Mohole school in Milan, between the end of 2023 and January 2024.

The assignment was simple on paper: create a short film of about one minute with a lamp as the protagonist. I decided to imagine what a Pixar-style casting session might look like, auditioning lamps for the iconic Pixar intro.

I handled everything from scratch: modeling, rigging, animation, texturing, rendering, and post-production.
I had been learning animation in Maya for a year, and this was the first time I approached full character interaction. What made it especially challenging was designing and building the main rig myself.
Creating a believable mechanical deformation — especially for the springs and joints of a desk lamp — pushed me into unfamiliar territory. But I learned a lot.
This project also marked a shift from procedural materials to textured assets, allowing me to explore visual detail in a more artistic way.

Looking back now, I can clearly see its limitations, but it remains a turning point — the project where I truly realized how passionate I am about animation.

🔗