There is something magical about a large project.
When you give up so much time, attention and effort on an endeavor it's not a stretch to say that you'v birthed something very real. Add in the collaborative dynamic and that means sharing something very powerful with dozens of other people. That thing takes part of you, but it is also a reflection of you and everyone who worked on it. I could go on, but I'll save my thought about this for a proper case study, or another project exploration.
When I page through the drawings, hear the music and see the characters I catch glimpses of people I met with, hallways I walked through and emotions I felt over the months of development. It is with this powerful sentiment that I share a brief case study of "Ready, Set, Moore."
Emma Rigging
We were still early into preproduction so I had the help of my Art Director, Philip Neves to carefully work out aesthetic details for Emma, one of our favorite characters. The time was very well spent! As her sketch got worked into the final design I believer this was one of the most appealing characters I've ever made!
The character development process was fruitful, but indulgent. Many weeks were burned up getting to characters up to speed and I was starting to feel the pressure to get the project into production. I carried Emma's design conventions into the other characters and began creating layered vector art in Adobe Animate.
I set the characters up as single-view, three-quarter front pose instead of rigging up three hundred and sixty degree rigs or multi-view rigs. Final designs were ready to move from Animate to Moho. I was a Moho newbie, so I started learning how to import SVGs, smart bone actions and rigging controls.
Amelia Rigging
I set the characters up as single-view, three-quarter front pose instead of rigging up three hundred and sixty degree rigs or multi-view rigs. Final designs were ready to move from Animate to Moho. I was a Moho newbie, so I started learning how to import SVGs, smart bone actions and rigging controls.
I was in the process of transitioning my rigging workflow from Adobe Animate to Moho and it was a real mind-bender! The Amelia character helped me figure out the "Rigging Recipe" that I wanted to use for the rest of the cast.
Calvin Rigging
Character Development
"Ready, Set, Moore!" is a web series about a family of 4 that was made for Child Evangelism Fellowship. I was heavily involved at the beginning of the project and I'd like to share about the character design process.
One of the initial design objectives was to use strong geometric shapes to guide the shapes of the characters.
Calvin, the Dad, has a T shape.
Amelia, the Mom, has a triangle shape.
Emma, the daughter, is soft and cute.
And Simon, the son, is sporty and angular.
The idea of super simplified characters was cute, but the team wasn't crazy about this direction so I pushed the designs into the kind of classical style that you might see in television animation.
