The Last Dance
This was a personal project where I imagined an apocalyptic landscape in which people have long since disappeared and only an inflatable tube man remains. I wanted to create something out of my comfort zone and strive for a more realistic look whilst still retaining the stylised look of a miniature diorama.
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I also wanted to explore new animation techniques to achieve the erratic movement of the tube-man whilst keeping the animation loopable.
Here is the unrendered viewport display of my animation. As you can see, there are more details on aspects such as the gas station and tube-man, I intentionally kept the background as simple as possible as I knew I would be distorting it with dust particles and volumetric fog.
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I started with a loose sketch so I could determine the personality of the piece. It also helped with establishing colour and lighting.
Most of the textures were procedurally generated, however I wanted a particular look for the face.
The design is very simple in line with references I had collected. To make the overlay seem withered, I erased parts of the images with different textured brushes and overlayed the texture as an alpha over the tube-man's head
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I think simple faces can add a much needed sense of relatability and empathy to a character, especially in more detailed scenes such as these
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I also documented my process and created a short-form video for distribution on social media.
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I focused specifically on the creation and animation of the tube-man and the specific addons used to achieve the desired effect.