Ink & Giants Christmas Animation
A Christmas Ident made for Ink & Giants
Big things have small beginnings. What began life as a simple knit test grew into this short animation.
What was initially a styleframe for a pitch allowed me the RND time to work out a way of creating patterns in a knitted weave using the shader effector.
The Process
From here I pitched the idea of creating a short animation which would take place on this knitted surface. Using an jpeg sequence I could map out an animation which would drive the 3D knit. Treating each stitch as a pixel proved the most effective and an 8-bit graphic style was created which could be mapped on.
A series of tests found the limitations of how many colours the shader effector could support. A colour version was created which would drive the colour of the hairs on the surface and individual greyscale values were assigned to each colour to drive the shader effector.
The Character
Never wanting to settle for something good when we could make something great, the team at Ink & Giants decided to actually turn this into a Christmas jumper which would move with an animated character.
Deformers were used to turn the flat knitted surfaces into a full 3D jumper. The formula effector was utilised to add patterns between the knit and purl sides of the jumper. The character was modeled and the combined meshes were then rigged using deformers. Joints skinned to an FFD deformer controlled the hips while a combination of Bend, Twist and Squash&Stretch controlled the torso and head.
From here music was added and the character animated.
