"Der Anruf" - an exercise in 3D character animation. In the past for most animations I utilized pre-made animations from Mixamo and similar sources. These were great for characters in the background but anything that was more in focus and needed specific movements, they lacked the look I wanted.
Working heavily with references, I started using shape keys for facial animations for the first time. They worked great especially in combination with the more stylized approach in my work. It also simplified the overall animation process instead of using a more complex facial rig.
Before I started work on the 3D Character though, I wanted to create a quick concept sketch that focused on a simple design with strong shapes. The reason being that I need a design that gave me a lot of wiggle room for errors in the animation process.
To translate the character from 2D to 3D, I modeled the base shape in Forger on the Ipad, exported the Model to Procreate for texturing and compiled all the files in Blender. A big struggle I had was creating the hair for the character. Weather sculpting each hair strand by hand or using hair simulation did not give me the desired look.
In the end I came up with a simple solution: using and layering a transparent painted hair card texture on an organic mesh.
Once the character was established I focused on creating all the necessary shape keys for an asset library. For that I heavily used references and was surprised how quick this process worked.
As per usual, I recorded and showed the process in a YouTube video. This way I can share my learnings with others but also engage the community on YouTube which usually helps me find more ways to solve problems I had along the way.
