ChouChou "Macarons" - 3D character animation in Blender

Kyle Balda writes:

My wife Janet and I started combining our skills of animation filmmaking and French cooking to make little how-to videos in our kitchen that featured a 3D animated character named ChouChou. Originally it was just to pass the time during lockdown, but we ended up really enjoying it and just finished our third installment.

We started about a year ago, neither of us ever having used Blender before. I had many years of experience in several 3D animation softwares, but Janet had never opened a 3D program before--she got the hang of Blender very quickly. In order to make these episodes, I modeled, rigged, surfaced, and animated the characters all in Blender. After we shot the live action plates, Janet tracked the 3D camera, surfaced the characters and lit/composited all the shots, as well in Blender.

Blender has been such an incredibly powerful tool, not least for the supportive community around it, without which we would not be able to make these. For the first episode we had help from Jacob at InLightVFX for lighting and compositing, and David at Level Pixel Level has been tremendously helpful throughout in the character rigging process.

Each of our episodes features a different French patisserie recipe, this latest one is on macarons--here it is for your enjoyment!