My name is Michael Soluyanov, and I’m from Russia. I have been admin of a key group of Blender users in the VK social network (most popular in Russia) for over 10 years, and I work in a company as a 3D generalist. You probably saw my works on BlenderNation previously, for example the phone configurator made with Blend4web. Also I’m teaching online courses in Realtime School. This is my website where you can see a demo reel of my latest works:
So this year I decided to create a new short. It is about mice, making presents on Christmas (new year holidays). It will be super nice and heartwarming. Currently, I have made only two characters and the animation blocking.
Where is the mouse from? I was inspired by little toys, which you can find in Russia almost everywhere. Here is mine, I brought it in Saint Petersburg.
In order to make a movie, I made the mice more realistic, and gave them mouths because they will talk.
Creation process
I recorded a full timelapse of mouse creation here:
I love version 2.80, mostly because of lookdev and render mode, and that it makes material setup easy and fast. Selecting in render mode, hair in lookdev, and material previewing in lookdev are great timesavers! I am looking forward to EEVEE, but hair is not so great currently, so I have chosen Cycles for this project.
I’m not using special plugins for this project. For rigging I used the Rigify add-on, because I am familiar with it, and I also use the Tension Map addon for controlling creases on cloth (I think this addon must be a modifier).
For the bigger mouse I used a knittr material and it looks great:
Second character:
All other textures are basic with extra details added with particles:
And adding stitches is very simple, I just made a stitches brush like in the tutorial on Blender Cloud.
LookDev preview:
Also I made a logo for the mouse delivery company. This little piece makes the story nice and realistic:
But my project is just at a starting point - I will create much more stuff to make a movie: 5 characters, 7 different locations with many objects in them, and also animations and renders.
About the Author
Michael Soluyanov, admin of a Blender user group in the vk.com, 3D generalist.
1 Comment
Great work!
Love the wool materials