Earlier in 2006, STRUT hosted a successful character design contest. There was a ton of talented artists who had submitted their works and there were many impressive entries. The intent of the contest was to provide a venue to expose some talented artists and all the while, I was also hoping to find a talented 2D artist/character designer who had great artistic sense but also knew what was needed to design a character that embodied a 2D sensibility. With over 70 entrants, it was clear from the start that Joel Smith was the artist I wanted to work with when I was heading up the production of building a 3D character that would be built for cartoon performances. Joel's designs were fun, original and had a style that would be perfect for a character with a 2D feel. I knew he was the perfect guy for the job which is why I asked him if he'd be willing to design our new character that STRUT would be giving away free to all its members. Joel gladly accepted. Score! Our first team member was in place.

Right from the beginning, the intention of this STRUT character was to be a cartoon performance rig with features that you would also find in many of the top animated features such as the Incredibles, Chicken Little, etc. So the expectations were to have the best free rig available. If the pressures of that weren't enough, then there was the matter of trying to build a 3D model that had to match the awesome character designs that Joel had done. Often when I read those "Making Of" books on my favorite CG features, I'll see awesome 2D designs but something gets lost in the transformation into 3D. The 2D drawings always had a quality that was hard to quantify but whatever it was, it seemed to get lost during the process of being made into a 3D model. So this was something I was always concerned with and although I never verbalized it so as to not add to the regular modelling pressures, I was always concerned it could be a factor when character was being built. Will it happen here? Cut scene: In walks Lisa Griffiths, a very talented 3D modeller whose shouldered the responsibility to bring this character into 3D. I seen her portfolio and she had a very impressive list of models and I had no doubt that she was a very talented artist but could she do justice to our very extreme character designs? Although she was very capable and qualified but this is an area where seasoned vets have struggled and failed. So how would Lisa do??

Short answer: She hit a homerun...in Game 7 with 2 out...for the World Series! Her 3D model not only hit the mark but even somehow expanded on the designs Joel had provided. Her 3D model turned out great! This was all while she was learning Maya, which I asked her to try instead of her native modelling application. And she did all the texturing as well. Needless to say, I was very impressed with her modelling abilities.

So with the design and modelling complete, the last area to address was rigging this character. That shouldn't be hard to do, right? Well, since two homeruns have already been hit and the expectation level is now even higher. It would not be an easy task for just anyone. As I said previously mentioned, I wanted a character with qualities that you'd find in high end rigs in feature films- full squash + stretch, deforming arms/legs, intuitive and fast controls, etc. I am an Animator, I know what I want but maybe even worse, I also know what I don't want. This was not going to be an easy task that just any rigger could do.

Rigging a character can be one of the longest and toughest aspects of the creation process. The rigger also needed to someone with allot of skill and knowledge that could tackle such a big list of requirements as well as troubleshoot the necessary elements that could possibly erupt during the construction. For this major role, I relied upon Andy Seredy- who also happens to post some of the funniest and entertaining posts on STRUT and who I first met during STRUT on the Slopes earlier this year. He was the fastest person I have seen pick up snowboarding. He was also the fastest person to ever quit too. One run into the day and his skills were already showing up, he retired to take ownership of a bar stool at the base of Whistler. Although I am very impressed with his rigging skills, I was even more impressed he could handle our Canadian beer so well, not something any American can do.

So that was our team. Joel Smith on pencils, Lisa Griffiths on skins and Andy Seredy dropping in the framework. I acted as Project Lead but I really reserve all credit for this talented trio, three emerging artists whose name you will hear alot of more of in the future. So without any further hesitation, I'd like to introduce our talented team and let them personally share more about the character creation process.

Andy: Hey all,
My name is Andy Seredy. I was born in Toronto, Canada, but moved to Florida when I was about 9. I got started with animation in high school making a short stop motion film about space fairing vegetables. That’s about as far as the plot went

After high school, I went to college in Orlando, FL at Full Sail, but I didn’t really start learning until I landed a small gig working on a MOD for Unreal Tournament 2004 as the Character TD and Animator. We entered the MOD in the Make Something Unreal 2004 Contest and got 5th for best MOD Overall, out of ~100 entries.

A well timed cold visit to Awe Games with a PC Gamers Magazine article in hand about the MOD and contest, landed me a gig as a junior Animator/Rigger. I ended up working on a bunch of titles for Sponge Bob Square Pants and Avitar (among others) eventually ending up as the Lead Animator of a very small, super talented crew. I then got a gig teaching UnrealED to a bunch of great students at The Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale for a couple of semesters, but a growing workload at Awe forced me to leave.

I am a huge Tom and Jerry fan, and watch some shorts practically every day. I’m also a huge Andreas Deja fan, and love dissecting his animations, and listening to his interviews and insights. I own every film Mel Brooks has ever made, along with an original movie poster for Blazing Saddles, and wouldn’t trade them for anything. In my spare time, I love to go to the zoo, and draw the animals and people that I see. I do enjoy a good paintball fight in the woods, but the only problem with living in Florida is that it’s too damn hot to play all the time. I end up staying in the nice air conditioned indoors, reading a good book, or copying frames from a Tom and Jerry short.

I love beer, as Tim indirectly mentioned, but in all fairness, he was under the impression I could “handle” Canadian beer well, because he believed me when I told him I was Bulimic, and not sick from all the drinks.

 Lisa: Originally from the eclectic city of Winnipeg, Manitioba, I moved to Vancouver to attend
Capilano College's Commercial and Digital Animation Programs. After graduating in 2004, I freelanced as concept artist, mostly working on art for pitches by an independent writer. Although none of these pitches made it to the pilot stage it was an excellent opportunity to hone my design skills. Next I was offered some freelance work with Pirate games, a small developer in San Francisco. During my time with Pirate I gained experience in a variety of disciplines, mainly as a 3d animator and modeler but also as a 2d animator, rigger, and texture artist and character designer.
 
Recently I’ve landed a fulltime job at Blue Castle Games an exciting new developer here in Vancouver BC. BCG is also a small sized company of about 65 people which feels huge to me since I’ve never worked with more than 20. It’s also my first time working in the studio environment I find it extremely motivating to be surrounded by such talent and ingenuity. I would say that currently, character modeling and texturing are my specialty, but I love to take on any aspect of entertainment design.
 
 
My long term goal is to get involved in the visual development of digitally animated feature films, games, T.V. shows or children’s book illustration. Of course, I would also like to become a better artist, constantly enhance my skill level, experiment and learn.
 
 
When not working, I like to caricature/cartoon real people, watch movies, read and research esoteric or scientific topics of interest, and enjoy the naturally stunning locations of British Columbia.

Joel: I was born in a small town in southern New Brunswick, Canada. My parents ran one of the few restaurants and motels owned by my family. Growing up I was constantly being called up to make beds or clean dishes at the family restaurant. I soon learned that I didn't want to end up running one of my family's restaurants. After sitting in a theatre with my father watching Jurassic Park as a kid I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to know how they made those creatures come to life. I looked into what I needed to take in college to be able to create the dinosaurs like thay had and happened upon a community college in my own province. I started drawing right away for my college application and got accepted into their Art Fundamentals course and upon completion of that into their Animation and Grahpic Design program.

After graduating from college I was fortunate enough to land myself right back into the hotel industry with my first job as a dining server at the prestigeous Fairmont Algonquin Hotel & Resort. Oh the joy I felt after completing my animation training and ending back in the hotel industry once again, at least it wasn't for my family. Fortunately my lucky break came after only two short seasons at the hotel and I was called to Halifax, Nova Scotia with the promise of actual animation work on a children's show called Farzzle's World. Since then I have worked on several other flash television shows as an animator before making the jump into 3D animation at Halifax Film studios where I'm currently working.

I'm continually amazed at the size of this studio compared to other flash studios that I've worked at, I truly enjoy going to work. I love bringing characters to life in 3D. It allows me the ability to constantly tweak my animation as I'm going through it, or more often, when I need to tear it apart. If I'm not animating at work I focus my time at a gym, climbing rocks, or surfing a wave. Occasionally I do put chicken scratches onto paper, they sometimes ressemble drawings.

Thanks you guys. Regarding the project, you each served a key role based on your strengths. But each role varied signifigantly from one another. Can you summarize what you did and the process you took to achieve the required tasks?

Joel: Desiging Sergio was purely by accident. He came about during a sketching session with a small group of animators that met on weekends. I usually don't start with much in mind since I find it limits what I end up with on the page. I usually start with putting down a few lines and seeing what my eye makes out and go on from there adding in lines until I see the character come about. I'll usually start with the head and let that define the character and resulting shape of the body, especially how the head flows into the neck and body. It helps me define the pose and size of the character. At this point I throw what I've learned about design sense of curves and straight edges until I end up with a final character that I'm happy with and a pose I like. This is how I sketch out my characters.

This whole experience definetly taught me more about my designs and thought process. I learned how to think more about the design of the character for further passed just the sketch. A fair amount of my changes to the design came once I saw the character in three dimension and saw what did and didn't work in the two dimensional drawing. The original head was taller, which looked fine on paper but not as well in the computer. It was things like this that made me aware of how things truly look and work when designing for multiple mediums. Thinking about the character in more of a three dimensional way. When doing the turn around what might look in line to me wouldn't be when brought into the computer thankfully Lisa's amazing modelling skills were able to make sense of my drawings, better at times then I could.

My hope for this project was to have a great 3D model of a 2D design pulled of well and we definetly succeeded in that. When Tim approached me about the project I immediately jumped on board and due to circumstances at the time I had a character already done and ready to go from a similar project that was no longer going ahead. It was just going to collect dust until Tim's email came in. I thorougly loved working with this rag tag group of creative artists and would love to do it again if the chance ever came up again. Thanks again to everyone involved and I hope you enjoy our character. Get animating!

On naming Sergio:

Joel: Upon completion of the sketch the naming process began and after an intense match of thumb wars and rock, paper, scissors with Tim that lasted one whole day and destroyed a full case of canadian bear(explaining why it took so long) the name Sergio had been chosen.

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