Mani Sandhu is an award winning, freelance CG generalist based in Bristol (South West, UK).
His main skills are Animation in Maya, Modelling and Texturing in ZBrush, Maya and Mari and rigging in Maya.
Secondary skills are Lighting and Rendering using Arnold and Compositing and Editing using Nuke and Premiere Pro.
Mani also loves stop motion and combining this with CG using 3D printing with FormLabs printers.
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Mani has a proven ability to take designs and storyboards through to completion of 3D assets and final output.
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In 2019, whilst studying at UWE, he won his first award as an artist when he collaborated with Sabrina Marengo on her animated 3D/2D hybrid "Shipwrecked".
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At The Royal Television Society, Student Television Awards.
The film won the Craft Skills in Animation Award, for which the whole crew was nominated.
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Mani was responsible for all CG modelling, rigging, lighting and render and a large amount of animation. The film has gone on to win multiple awards and been selected at 25+ festivals.
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From a young age, Mani has been a fan of fantasy (particularly Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings), super heroes (particularly Batman, Superman, Spiderman and The Hulk), comic books (Transformers, X-Men, Fantastic 4), animation (80s classics like Dungeons and Dragons, Thundercats, He-man And The Masters Of The Universe), video games (from the old Atari days to Xbox OneX). Even horror classics (Hammer Horror, A Nightmare On Elm Street, An American Werewolf In London). You name it... If it has an exciting story involved, Mani is probably going to like it!
As a teenager he was a keen sports man and martial artist, excelling at hockey, football and Kung Fu. This was predetermined by a love for Bruce Lee and his movies, among other stars of Chinese cinema like Jackie Chan.
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Other movies like the Rocky series, The Karate Kid series, Jean Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport and Kickboxer, along with, Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator and Predator, inspired Mani to stay fit and take up martial arts.
This love of martial arts, fantasy, comic books and sci fi and horror has followed him into adulthood and is a constant inspiration to his animation. He loves shows like Game Of Thrones (well, there aren't any shows like Game of Thrones!) and loves, that there is new Star Wars content, like we've never been used to. With Marvel taking over the world, there is no shortage of things to keep Mani entertained.
He loves reading and regularly buries himself in the "latest book of the series", by one fantasy author or another. His favourites include George RR Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire , Patrick Rothfuss's King KIller Chronicles and Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy among others.
Any spare time Mani has, is spent with his two children Jake aged 14 and Lorcan aged 7 who are looking like they have similar interests to their dad.
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