03 - Cup Game
This one took the longest time, for a whole host of reasons. Couple of design changes, couple of processes. Building out rigs differently, hands moving in front and behind things in 2D, then having well over 200 layers in the cup animation and managing that plus the positions. It was a lot, but ultimately I’m happy with how it turned out. I also ending up using AI in the end.
The initial sketch.
The final animation.
The Process
Some of the original tests.
Testing out cartoon styles.
Testing the styles in motion.
Initial testing and character designs. Half-way through the project we decided that to build out the transition from eye beams to cup game we would need to have the character catch the ball, but this meant also designing the face, but nothing quite felt right.
That’s when we decided to incorporate midjourney into the process.
Colored the head and animated it in AE. Rigs were built to change colors.
In context and with some other versions of the head.
After using Midjourney we got to work on the background and tried several, but ultimately went with a brick wall inspired by some in Chicago alleyways.
Background, left the portal in for context. The scene change was done with mesh warp. Check out the layer and effect stack on the right.
