United3dArtists Archive

Biograssas - Mascot
Had a project that would take 2 weeks. I actually had a good contract, sold the guy right up, got a good price, waited till they paid, delegated really efficiently (only had to do the 3D work) and had the two illustrators I have to work on the concepts.

They all did a number of concepts to pitch to the client, because they didin't really know what they wanted.


They chose this one:


Then we redid it to our liking:


And since yesterday I have been working on it in 3D in trueSpace to then get it. I was going to export it and render outside - but then decided the shaders looked nice from trueSpace and rendered out my 4K images from there.

Final Image:


Mascot planning:
I should have done this earlier to guide my family on building the actual mascot. It was a good exercise though to whip it out. They started without this, but later got the grips of it all.


Scale and descrpencies between the illustration and mascot (to accomdate a human)


New design
Accomodating the materials and the way my family built the mascot (which actually was rather different than the original design)


Different Angle
The shaders I used was this cool snow DX shader I modified. It looks like cloth, and I loved it. It was not ready for my passes, but I am thinking to adapt it to my passes like I did with the leaf shader I built and shared. I did have to manually reshader the textures to get the passes though. I then started compositing things in Blackmagic Fusion, but then found it had a UHD limit on the free version... so I rebuilt the tree in Blender - where I was rusty - and exported in UHD. Now I know.. that it may be better to work with Blender for my compositing - and learn to make proxy files and a boolean switch or something to aid the processing power for colour balancing. I have started to download HitFilm to see if that can be used.. it's also free.


I then ripped the Bob rig and placed it to this character, did a quick weight test and posed him.


Here are some pictures of the real mascot in producion.








In the end, the nose is vastly different again from the illustration. In fact, it's pretty too big in the illustration, but I have another deadline pressing so I will..... leave it at that. Get paid, pay the outsourced help, and viola! Throw that into my portfolio.

Impressive boss/businessman/organization skills. Of course great CG! Buuutttt, I have to say that if I was the customer I would not be happy with the final result. The real mascot suit looks nothing like the chosen drawing. Many of the drawings resemble this suit. Key features of the drawing like the up and down arrows, drawing head shape is simple like an egg, and his clothes' style are missing or very different in the finished product.

We took creative liberty as that was a design we actually rejected as a team, also the client ultimately (The chosen one - Tier 2); and we had the right as creative directors to redefine it - as was due part of the process and also in the contract. That design from that list was only part of doing proposals to do a "hit or miss" client comprehension (as often they have no idea what they really want, but they really do know it but just don't know how to express it) - and we agreed the arrow design worked only for 2D but not 3D nor as the mascot - and it didn't captivate their logo or company definition ultimately. It's part of the job to propose realistic designs that cator to their wishes and requirements, but not exclusively to the client emotional guidance. They pitched again and proposed a counter proposal to our options (including over the one they chose) - and thus we re-re-designed it more to their taste (the final design).
The consequencial plain shirt was client choice, the sneakers too. We were going for a business man/engineer/dinosaur - but they were not happy with that - they wanted something child like (which they didin't mention till AFTER we showed them our proposals - typical of most clients). I pitched the head that was not anything close to a sphere or egg for reconizability, sillohuette and uniqueness; but due to the materials, we went with the rounder head and I adapted the 3D head accordingly - showed them the changes and comparison and they approved.

They are very happy with the results so far.

Ah, much better. It didn't seem from the posts that the client had much input after picking the drawing but they were there all the way through, contract covered it all well, and you've learned enough about client behavior to prepare for it. Good! Also the suit isn't finished yet so my impressions were too early. Again, excellent coordination/management/implementation of the many facets of this. Good job from your employees/helpers too.

This is how some people get rich. They are the ones who discover that something is wanted and put the skills and resources together, build a business, to do it.

Wait. I'm supposed to be working. Grunt, push that mower! Bookkeeper, figure out how to enter that complicated tax payment. Get the customer's bills ready. Supply, get the grunt new boots. Mechanic, install that carb kit. ... Aw, I can't even manage a team when they are all me!

Nicely done, both business and art sides.