well this one took me a long time, didn’t it?   I spent most of the time shooting HDRIs and figuring out compositing.

I think it came out ok.

Look after the jump for a couple close-up shots of the model and for a little stop-mo turnaround I put together.

there’s not a lot of new stuff going on here.  Most of the textures are sub-surface scatter textures; they seem to do really well with a semi-realistic lighting setup and cartoony figures.

I also gave the “tube-lips” style a shot.  I think i like em.

I starting to use rigs to position my models, instead of modeling them in a pose, and I’m pretty happy with how this rig worked out.

I hate rigging though.

And here’s the little stop-mo i put together.  It took me the longest portion of this project.  As you can see, this is my super sweet camera rig.  In case your wondering, that is toy train track sticky-tacked to the floor and marked off with masking tape.  That at the top is my tripod cart, and in the middle i have my stand position marked out in masking tape.  Spared no  expense.

Here’s a closeup of my tripod cart.  Again, your probably asking: is that a toy train rubber banded to a book shelf with a marble and a paper clip sticky tacked on?  Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.  The train rides the rails carrying my tripod on that shelf, the marble rides along the floor and keeps the cart from tipping, and the paper clip is so i can move the cart from one tape marker to the next around the track fairly accurately.  Again, spared no expense.

And here’s what happened.  I misjudged how jerky my background was and spent a lot of time keyframing the position of my model to get it where it is.  I also tried using  Maya Live to motion track my footage but I think it hated the idea of rotating in a circle and the results were sad. I chalk this one up to learning experience.