Minimate Labs

Walking Dead Contest

December 10, 2013

Man, sometimes I think I only do this stuff to enter contests. I don't, I honestly enjoy creating this stuff. But here's yet another contest entry. Skybound, the publisher of The Walking Dead comics, created an animation contest to promote the Minimates line. I had figured out a good way to get Minimates to talk using texture maps, but hadn't actually implemented it. This gave me the opportunity to push forward.

The rules instructed you to send a link to an animated short featuring Walking Dead Minimates. I read the rules very carefully, there was no directive on the type of animation. However, every other entry was stop motion...

...and done by children.

Peter Pan Silhouettes

December 5, 2013

In late December of 2013, the Minimate Multiverse was full of animated speculation about an upcoming unknown new license. There was a vague hint given about a new box set for a new license. The speculation ran wild, from Star Wars and the return of DC (which were quickly shot down) to the A-Team and Dukes of Hazzard. People quickly latched onto the idea of Peter Pan which would coincide with the release of a new remastered Blu-Ray edition. Not everyone was onboard with Peter Pan, but the timing made sense to me so I created these little silhouette images to feed the fire.

I like the Tinkerbell more than Captain Hook. I don't know, Hook just seems like it's reaching. It's not iconic enough, while Tink just works.

You can read the speculation thread here, or see the released Minimates here.

Translucent Tuesday Fight Club

December 3, 2013

One of the more interesting running features at the Minimate Multiverse was Geohound's Translucent Tuesday Fight Club. Every Tuesday he would post a series of photos of two (or more) translucent Minimates fighting one another. Geohound has a knack for fight choreography and it became a pretty popular feature.

Anyone can contribute their own fights to the thread as well. So having an appreciation of translucency and violence, I contributed a couple stills.

I also created a upper-cut animation but the timing wasn't quite right. It doesn't quite flow correctly. But I'll include it here anyway for future reference.

Translucent Tuesday Fight Club has migrated to Minimates Central. Check out new and old fights there.

10th Anniversary Contest

November 28, 2013

Here's a contest entry that wasn't a contest entry. With the 10th Anniversary of Minimates, the Minimate Multiverse ran a contest that featured a lot of San Diego Comic Con promo material. I had a great idea for an entry but I didn't need any of the prizes for my collection. So I made the entry anyway and just excluded myself from the voting.

Everything apart from the cake and the candles were in my model library. So other than the difficult frosting this was really quick to put together.

Battle Beast Contest - Thundegaar

November 26, 2013

Yes, another contest entry. This one was involved creating your own Battle Beast. It was tough to decide which animal, but after many sleepless nights Thundegaar the hippopotamus took form.

Check out the link for many more images.
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Recursive Spin

November 21, 2013

I wanted to create a new rendered avatar image for the Multiverse message boards with a different look. Nothing was working until I started experimenting with texture maps. In 3D programs you can effectively 'paste' an image on top of a model. This image can be anything, including a previously rendered image. So I rendered a series of images of a red Minimate falling and spinning away from the camera. Then I changed the color to orange and mapped the red Minimate images onto the torso block and rendered again. 10 iterations later I had quite a pile of images.

Unfortunately, when I animated it the Minimates were falling away faster with each iteration. It looked great for the first few frames, but then everything stretched out like the spaghettification effect around black holes. So I just took a chunk of usable frames, ran it forwards and backwards, and ended up with this.

Not really what I was looking for so I didn't use it as an avatar. Still cool enough to show here though.

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Contest

November 19, 2013

I know I've commented here about how contests are a good way to motivate me to create something. Here's another example. Diamond Select created a photo contest to promote the new line of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Minimates. They allowed software manipulation to create energy effects, so it was a nice opportunity to learn how to use my new Cintiq tablet.

I've been out of the video game world since the Game Cube replaced the SuperNES. So it was nice that this game features features a lot of the old Capcom characters I knew. Based on screenshots, I tried to replicate the Phoenix and Iron Man effects. The background was some Mega Bloks sets that were handy.

I was never really satisfied with the output, but there was less than two weeks to the deadline. More time probably wouldn't have helped, but I might have tried something more ambitious. Unfortunately the post with all the entries on the Art Asylum web site has been lost to the aether.

Dr. Strange Turnaround

March 13, 2012

Here's a quick turnaround of the Dr. Strange Minimate I created for the World War Hulk cover recreation contest.

The cape had to be remodeled because the flowing cape from the cover didn't match the official Minimate. I think that's actually version four of that cape. It took a couple attempts to get the folds to look right.

2003 Blanks: Red

February 28, 2012

Concluding the 2003 Blanks series (for now) is "Red".

It's a bit of stretch for this image to fit the theme. But it seems to work if you don't think about it too hard..or if you are a recent recipient of light head trauma.