The most challenging part of making animated film is the characters. While it’s not exactly easy to make all the sets and props in 3D, they don’t have to move. Or if they do, they’re relatively simple to set up. Not so with characters. Even the most basic human character has dozens of controls to set up for basic movement and facial expressions, and that doesn’t even factor in things like hair or clothes or any custom aspects—like going feral and turning into werewolf!
Because I’m just a single human, there’s no way I could create all that stuff entirely on my own. While I might be able to build a single character from scratch at this point, filling out a cast of over a dozen characters would take months per character. There’s no way I have that kind of time, so I rely on a combination of free and purchased models to help get me started.
All the characters are based around DAZ3D’s free Genesis 8 platform, imported into Blender where they are customized and rigged for animation. All their clothes were purchased from the DAZ store, and again modded to match the character designs from the comic. Likewise, a number of the props are purchased models, but I model custom stuff that I can’t find elsewhere. The sets are also a mash-up between things I model myself and purchased items and buildings. Anything specific to the scene is likely to get custom modeled, while the background details and everyday items are more likely to be assets I’ve bought and modified.
All of the main characters—Kate, Mike, and Chow are customized rigs exported out of DAZ and modified in Blender to give the stylized look that more or less matches their look in the comic.
The supporting cast is being created using a what I call “universal rigs.” Unlike the main characters, these are set up with controls to change facial features, body type, height, weight, colors for the skin, hair, and eyes, and even have some basic haircuts and outfits already set up. In order to create a new character, all I need to do is tweak a few settings and voila! A new basic character is ready. That’s great for background characters, but for more specific supporting cast, I have the option to export new outfits and hair, modify the details in the textures and add any custom features like hair and clothing controls. All told using these “universal” rigs shaves days (or weeks!) off of the production time.
Gang members created using an updated version of the universal male rig, but customized with new clothes, hair, and detailed texture maps.
The controls for the character’s colors, face, and shape are on the lists on the right hand side of the screen. All this took about a week to set up for the initial universal rig, but now that means I’m saving a week of work every time a new character gets created using this as a foundation. Basically, I’ve transferred a huge chunk of the versatility of the DAZ3D Genesis 8 platform over to Blender, here. These face and body shapes are all presets in DAZ. What I’ve added here is the cartoon look, stylization, and custom Blender-specific rig controls.
Next week we’ll take look at the process it took to make Kate!