Behind the Scenes: Internsheep Animation

Hello. I am HOYA CHOE residing in Seoul, Korea. I have been working as a 2D designer for the past 8 years.

I had a desire to create 3D animation. However, 3ds Max felt very difficult—I bought a textbook and studied it, but failed to learn it. I had worked as a 2D designer for 8 years and I thought 3D animation was beyond me. I felt that it was something I couldn't do, something I couldn't try.

But I accidentally came across Blender 3D, and I lightly started sculpting for fun with my tablet. Like a game. Blender's sculpting felt very intuitive and was very fun. And I ended up making this first piece using Blender.

My first Blender 3D work

After making this, my expectations for Blender grew and I was satisfied. In earnest, I fell in love with Blender, version 2.79.

I wanted to use Blender to create a moving human. So I made my second work.

I was able to animate facial expressions and limbs, and I used cloth simulations.

I was getting more and more satisfied with Blender and realized that using it to create works would be my future.

I learned by reading Blender’s online manual, which helped me grow my knowledge of Blender. I am grateful to the Blender manual, Blender developers, and all Blender practitioners. And I recently noticed a very good BlenderCloud learning system.

Now I was convinced that I could create animations myself using Blender, so I made a Joker animation.

After creating the Joker animation, I felt that Blender and I were inseparable, and I was sure I would make all my future work with Blender.

 

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Internsheep concept

Now I had a firm idea to make an animation. Another designer provided a 2D illustration of the Internsheep and I carried out the character modeling, environment design, modeling, rigging, animation, and render all by myself.

The Internsheep represents the young workers of Korea in the present era. We made a character that cheers and encourages such young Koreans.

And I wanted to make an interesting animation by deforming the shape comically.

I did the entirety of the work, including all of the animations, using only Blender.

Modeling

In this work, sculpting was not used and it was made with subdivision surface-based modeling.

I tried to model as simply as possible.

Textures and shaders

Textures were not used except for the computer monitor in the interior scene. So it doesn't even have UV-unwrap. Only the Blender node shader was used to create colors and hues.

Rigging and animation

There are several bone structures, all made by me. I didn't use a rigging addon.

Many switches and “drivers” were used.

For CPU performance during animation playback, I made the drivers so that the object would be hidden in the viewport when it was not being rendered. As a result, Blender did not slow down even if the animation was played with an EEVEE render in the viewport. The animations were created manually, pose-by-pose, and were combined with dance animations from Mixamo.

The environment was also rigged like a character and an animation was made. Even the camera and camera lens were connected to the bone using a driver, so the camera was operated by controlling the bone.

Drivers control all bones, objects, lights, materials, and shapekeys.

AR elements were implemented using camera tracking.

I got the environment to move by interlocking with the sound of the music with the animation node.

Creating animations using Blender is very fun.

20 years ago, to make animation, there was only one way to get a job at an animation company. Now we have come to an era where one person can create animations using Blender.

I think the future of Blender is very “Shiny And Chrome”.

Thanks.

About the Author

HOYA CHOE, 3D Artist