Gravity Makes The Jump!
Role: Character Designer, 3D Modeling, Character Rig and Animation
Who is Gravity?
Gravity is the reason our shoe laces come untied. He is a tiny little creature with even tinier wings, yet the inability to fly. No worries! For this thrill seeker, bungee jumping is the perfect activity for him. Wrapping the end of our laces around his belly, he takes the dive off our sneakers. Into the air and then straight onto the concrete… you can say he’s done this a few times. If you’re wondering why you haven’t seen him, his pink body is the perfect camouflage next to a common wad of stepped on gum. Next time your laces come undone, take a look around, he may be hiding in plain sight.
Character Design Process
Initial Character Sketches
Character Turnaround
Color Mock Up
3D Modeling & Materials Process
This character animation was my first dive into Cinema 4D. I created and conceptualized Gravity from the prompt “Mysteries of the Universe” as an explanation of a common phenomenon. Creating his traits and personalities was a really fun part and got me excited to work on his story and action. Planning the scene for the animation was quite natural after I developed his backstory.
As a Cinema 4D noob it took a while to get a hang of sculpting tools and building complex shapes mainly in the goggles and shoelaces which were not built from basic polygons. Instead of doing a subtle action, to really capture his personality I had to show off a jump sequence. This required rigging him to bend his knees as a pre-jump action. The rig was super finicky but I couldn’t give up on the humorous poses I wanted him to be in so I dedicated a lot of time to get the rig set. Thankfully the keying for animation in turn ended up being easy and for an exploration into this software it turned out to be a successful learning experience.