Blip is a member of “The Crew”, a group of explorers traveling the universe in search of new life forms
Designing a Character for Animation
It was important when designing the characters for the Crew to keep them clean, simple, and appealing. We strove for unique character designs while also not getting too specific. It’s key that all character designs work for a wide range of animation possibilities and situations. Aia and Jules were the core members of the Crew with full facial animation capabilities. Blip is part of the supporting cast of characters, including Dozer, Hatch, and a yet unannounced character. We wanted to explore new body types with each of these additional characters to give students a wide range of animation opportunities. In Blip’s case, his design allows students to try out mechanized transformations, quadruped movements, as well as flight opportunities. Plus he’s just so darn cute.
Blip’s fly & safe mode
Blips’s design allows students to try out mechanized transformations, quadruped movements, as well as flight opportunities
Rigging a Character for Animators
We knew that elements of Blip’s design could be challenging for students, so we kept the rig setup as simple as possible, while still robust. For example it could have been complicated to retract the legs into the body, so we built a simple attribute for each leg to do just that. Another challenge with the design was that Blip was a hard surface character, but we didn’t want to limit students to only a realistic style of animation. To that end we built in squash and stretch attributes so students can really push the stylistic look when desired.
