When I was first designing John, this was a random image that just seemed to keep growing on the page. I'm not one for large, complex scenes, but this one felt effortless. An old man, a porch, and missed opportunities.

Part of a series of images studying age, and its effects on different characters. It was interesting to separate what speaks to a character's age, versus what features are specific to the individual.

My first fully-designed super hero. I won't geek out here by going into her power list. I mainly wanted to give her an interesting look, something that wasn't necessarily the same costume, but a mix-n-match of different outfits along a similar style.

Wompa is a character based on my apparent personality. According to my friends, I'm cuddly, and huge, and huggable. I bruise easily, at least emotionally, and I'm a bit of a clutz. My best friend decided to draw what she thought I'd look like as a cartoon character. Using that drawing as inspiration, I created this 3D character. Wompa was created from polygons, as his complex, yet wholly organic shape would have made NURBs surfaces an inefficient choice.

Wompa's fur was an honest-to-God nightmare. I used every time-saving trick I knew, and learned some new ones while I was at it, to get his fur rendered. You'll notice that while there are soft shadows on the ground, the light and shadow on his fur is rather hard. Wompa was rendered as a separate pass with no area lights, and was composited later, along with the light snowfall.

Animating Wompa was fun. The challenge was all in trying to show his weight distribution and mass. I worked on his feet for a long time before I was even mildly satisfied with the way in which they hit the ground, along with the rest of his body following. The only regret I have is that I didn't rig the model with a wider range of facial expression. While not needed for the "Christmas" project, it would have been nice to have more range for future animations.

This is John. He's commuting. Happy is an ironic adjective. I actually sketched a picture of John long before he became an idea for a 3D character. I decided I wanted to create someone with a little character, and cartoonish proportions. He stood out as the most sympathetic. After working with Wompa, and his processor-choking fur, I wanted something a little more... well... bald.

As subtle as it is in the tiny animation, I think the texture adds a lot to this character. The stubble is a little heavy, but I wanted him to appear a bit haggard. I especially like how the texture on the fedora came out. John's eyes are mis-shapen, purposefully. A lot of beginner character animation resources will tell you that eyes are perfect spheres, but I've found that an easy way to break out of the sometimes-dead look of a 3D character is to simply change the shape of the eyes to something more cartoony. Wompa has a similar shape.

Gik was my first solo attempt at a character animation. Constructed out of a few simple NURBs surfaces, I wasn't sure exactly what purpose he'd serve. His lack of complexity turned out to make it easy to exaggerate his movements and poses in a cartoon-like manner. Two bones in each of his clown-size feet gave him a dynamic squash-and-stretch feel that I really fell in love with.