Adventure Time Series
Summer 2020
A series of 3D modeling/3D animations of my favorite scenes and characters from Adventure Time!
Refined knowledge of 3D modeling and basic shaders, first time rigging and weight painting
Jake the Dog
First up is Jake the Dog! This was the first character I've ever made -- I mainly made objects and props before this, so I learned a bunch from this project! Jake is pretty blobby, so this model is basically just a sphere with a couple of extrusions for appendages + facial features.
I watched a bunch of youtube videos about weight painting and rigging as well as parenting objects (facial features to the body) in preparation for this model. I modeled the mouth using Blender's Shape Keys, allowing it to transition between two states (open and close), which made for a basic rig that can get the point across. The scene that I chose to animate was one that could put a smile on my face every time I watched it in the show -- the scene were Jake was born. The moment he came out, he did this little dance that captured the essence of his character super well, a happy, goofy, appreciative lil pupper, that I tried to replicate here.
BMO
BMO, the multifunctional, protective robot, friend of Finn and Jake was next! The model itself was pretty simple -- a beveled, transformed cube with an inset face with extruded arms and legs and accessory buttons.
When thinking about which scene I wanted to animate for BMO, I wanted to show how self-sufficient and clever/resourceful they were, since these are not terms that people would usually associate with a robot. I made a low poly version of the scene where they changed their own batteries by placing them neatly in the right position, taking out their current batteries, shutting off their own power, dropping on the new batteries perfectly. I was able to learn lots from having the character interact with props, such as the bag that the batteries were in, getting better at precise positioning.
Earl of Lemongrab
The infamous Lemongrab couldn't have been left out from this series -- I'm sure many have seen this gif of Lemongrab poking himself somewhere on the internet. This was one of the first times I modeled something based on specific views (front view, side view, etc.).
The overall model was pretty simple with extruded arms and legs. I texture mapped the eyes onto a plane and used the shrinkwrap modifier to mold it to the topography of the face. I then duplicated the model I created, rotated it 180, added clothes, and it was ready to go! The challenging part of this animation was the speed and moving parts on both ends of the interaction. I had to be super careful to make sure that the arms don't intersect, and because I was basing this off of a 2D animation, the movements were sometimes physically impossible with a constant length arm. I ended up making a couple adjustments and the final animation loops pretty well!
Finn the Human
Last but not least, Finn the Human as a baby! This was the first time made a human-like character, so it was another huge learning experience! The model and weight painting both took a while to perfect -- it was mostly just trial and error to figure out where the model should deform to look more human-like.
This was another memorable scene in Adventure Time where Finn went back in time and saw the baby version of himself doing the buff baby dance in a bathroom. I ran into the same problem as the Lemongrab animation where since the original was a 2D animation, it would transition between frames really fast and the movement was sometimes not physically possible. I didn't have time to make the environment that goes with it, but tried my best to sync up the dance and the original show audio to give a similar experience.
Adventure Time Treehouse
This is the low poly treehouse that inspired me to make the adventure time characters and animations in the first place! The left image was and illustration created by Max Degtyarev, an artist that specializes in incredibly detailed cross section views of buildings. I used their illustration as a reference image to practice low poly modeling as my first large scale personal project while learning Blender. I wasn't able to include all the intricate details that Max drew, but this project definitely helped me get a lot better at modeling and matching models to existing images!