Wasi

My hard working time continued last month, because I had to create a 3D animation for the second biggest Volksfest in Germany after the Oktoberfest in Munich: The Cannstatter Wasen in Stuttgart Germany.
The animation was about the new mascot of the Volksfest, a rabbit called "Wasi", designed by Gecko Keck.





To set myself under pressure to finally learn another software than Cinema 4D, with which I used to work with until now, I forced myself to do everything in Maya. Therefore I had to learn almost every part the software within about one month: modeling, texturing, rigging (which I actually never did before, even not in cinema), animation, lighting, rendering plus dynamic cloth simulation.
It was really hard, and a very tight production period for me to do this.



First, I was very proud of my rig, which had really neat attributes like an advanced spine twist, an ik/fk switch, reverse foot control and dynamics for the hair and the big rabbit ears. Until I began to animate and I had ugly deformations on the legs when the legs were fully straighted out. :/



Anyway, time was tight for me, so I had to do the character animation inclusive lipsynch of about 25 seconds within 2 days. Then I had to simulate cloth of 6 flags, which Wasi pulls out of the Cannstatter emblem, the Cannstatter can. That was really a pain in the ... because the simulation never behaved like I wanted it to be. So I had to play for every flag with the attributes and calculate 1000s of simulations, until I found one, which was not thaaaaat bad. I'm really not satisfied at all, though, but I found out, that I hate simulations, especially under time pressure. You had so little control over the animation.

Well, today I had to be finished, and this morning, I still was working on the flag simulations. So I had to accept the look as it was, render the scene and had actually 3 hours for the background creation, compositing part, including titles and subtitles.
I finished the final rendering about half an hour before the delivery. ;)
I'll show it it online soon.


It was really fun to do once again character animation in 3D, but I admit that my heart rather is set to traditional animation.

So, the next project is waiting. I'll also do it with Maya. I'm proud that I can now work with it; it wouldn't be so without my personal adviser Fränk, who gave me useful tips and never seemed to be annoyed by all my stupid Maya questions! Thanks to him, I defeated my fear of mighty Maya (THANK YOU!).