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Skeleton Half Views

January 14, 2014

Here's a series of images that show how the skeleton from the previous post fits inside the basic Minimate body.

This obviously shows the detail in the model more than the previous renders. I tried to strike a balance between the complexity of a human skeleton and the simplicity of the Minimate form.

Here's a video turnaround just because I can.

Another skeleton post coming on Thurday too.

Translucent Tuesday Punch

December 31, 2013

I've mentioned the Translucent Tuesday Fight Club before and how it's basically translucent Minimates beating each other up. The guy behind it, Geohound, ran his own TTFC contest on the Multiverse. I was getting the animating itch again, so I created this:

You can see all the the entries here.

Roamer Zombie Turnaround

December 17, 2013

To finish up, here's the Roamer Zombie turnaround of the Minimate featured in the Skybound Walking Dead Contest post. Here's the released version.

Rick Grimes Turnaround

December 12, 2013

Here's the Rick Grimes Minimate featured in the Skybound Walking Dead Contest post. This is the basic face texture that matches the released Minimate.

Hairpieces are still challenging. Maybe I should practice.

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.

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.

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.

Shark Nose Stealth Jet

January 18, 2012

To date, DST has made four different versions of the MAX Stealth Jet. What's one more?

Here's a little video of it in action. It only looks slow in the video, I had to slow the video down so you could recognize the jet. If I showed you at full speed, all you'd see is a gray blur. It's proven that the shark head nose art increases speed (and awesomeness) by three orders of magnitude.

I'd love to see this as an actual, produced version. They could include several more stickers with all sorts of iconic nose art.