Developed in Blender
Purple Puppet has extensive experience developing characters with Blender.
With Treasure Hunt, we took it a step further by also rigging, animating, and rendering the entire project in Blender.
Character Art
For Kate, we created a clean subdiv topology and used displacement mapping to emphasize secondary details while avoiding fine details.
The design focuses on thickness and weight to ensure readability from a distance, avoiding "flimsy" elements.
This clean topology also allows for easy skinning and smooth deformations.
Shape Language
Elements that in reality would be thin, we chose to give thickness. Doing this consistently creates "rule" that emphasized consistency in the shape language of the style.
We avoid modelling folds and other details into the topology and instead rely on the discplacement mapping.
Rigging
We developed custom character and face rigs for each character.
Each character had its own unique challenges.
Along with using native rigging tools in blender like bendy bones and a variety of deformers we also developed a custom rigging UI for these characters.
Animation
Great characters need to have great animation. Our rigging team worked hand in hand with the animator to develop rigs that suit the animation perfectly.
Animation Process
Animation starts with direction.
Developing a storyboard is a key part to ensuring the project's vision translates to the animation.
The animatic is key to planning out the shots, the edit, and the required scene elements.
