Here’s a design I came up with a couple of years ago for Episode No.45 of the television series “Carl Squared”.
Grey-shaded version
Toon-shaded version
Here’s one of the shots it was used in:
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I had been asked to design and produce a few shots in 3D for a video game that the main characters were playing. It was called “Zombie Aliens from Outer Space” or something like that. If you know the show, it’s completely done in 2D using Flash. Of course the challenge for me was trying to match the style of the other 2D elements of the show.
The 2D style for Carl Squared
I used Maya 7 and rendered using the built-in vector renderer. The lines on the surfaces of the stone in the model that were to depict individual bricks were achieved by sub-dividing the surface to create a grid. Then I selected the edges where I wanted vector lines to appear and made them hard edges. As hardened edges, the vector renderer treats them as if the were any other edge along an angled surface. This also allowed me to keep these lines as true vector stroked lines that could be inported into Flash and further edited.
Here are some concept sketches alogn with the final cleaned-up B&W and Colour design …
Zombie Alien Mothership - version 1
Zombie Alien Mothership - version 2
Zombie Alien Fleet
Zombie Alien Fleet - Coloured
Unfortunately, they never called for any other 3D elements in the show. Too bad, because I thought there were many opportunities to model elements in 3D and leverage the ability to rotate things smoothly.
PIP Animation was responsible for some of the scripts in the final season, and all storyboards, designs, animation, straight through to final cut. Portfolio Entertainment produced the show and it was broadcast in Canada on Teletoon.
It was a fun show to work on. At least now I can say some of my 3D work made it to the small screen.
