moonjam
New Member
Hi guys,
I hope it's ok to post this here as it's not something from TV, film or videogames (all of which I have worked in!) but just a fun small project I worked on a couple of years ago. I'm new to the community and if this isn't the right place for this sort of thing, please let me know and/or delete this thread.
This project all started when Lee Unkrich tweeted asking for 3D modellers to send him examples of their work as he was looking for help with a personal project.
Now like any sensible human being, I love Pixar and Lee Unkrich is no small part of that wonderful company. He was co-director on Toy Story 2 (one of my all time favourites) and was putting the finishing touches to Toy Story 3 at the time. To put it simply, I am a gibbering fanboy and nearly broke my fingers attempting to reply to him quickly enough that he'd see it. So, fingertips smouldering, I sent him a link to my personal and professional websites, he liked what he saw and filled me in on what he wanted...
It turned out that his daughter Alice had designed a 'Wonder Remote' - a fantastic piece of equipment that allowed the owner to do pretty much everything. Lee wanted her idea to be fleshed out as a 'real' product so this was my take Alice's concept (Note - I wasn't the only 3D guy to do this, but I can't for the life of me find the others online any more).
I originally wanted to have all of the buttons light up but I never got round to making the separate materials for each one, so this is as close as I got
There were a few elements where I had to take a creative leap of faith on what Alice's intentions were
Not only was this huge fun to do it also gave me a chance to dust off the technical modelling part of my brain, I mostly do organic/character driven work these days so it was refreshing to go back to fillets, booleans...etc.
From a technical perspective the modelling was all done in MoI which is a fantastic cheap package. I used to model in Rhino many moons ago and MoI is basically 'Rhino SuperLite', which is perfect for me. Rendering was all done in 3ds Max using V-Ray.
It was a really great project with lots of great mini challenges to tackle, I especially enjoyed coming up with the extra little touches (such as the 'AU' branding/rockets...etc.). I'm sorry to say I never did solve the issue of having it fold up into a tiny square, however I am reliably informed that this feature would have an impact on manufacturing costs should it ever make it to market. Seriously though, the most satisfying part of all was getting this feedback from Lee and Alice:
“This is incredible! I was hoping someone would do an “actual product” kind of thing. Alice was very thrilled!”
Along with this
Anyway, I hope this is of interest to any of you guys and if not, then I apologise! If anyone has any questions or crits about it I would love to hear from you.
Cheers!
AJ
I hope it's ok to post this here as it's not something from TV, film or videogames (all of which I have worked in!) but just a fun small project I worked on a couple of years ago. I'm new to the community and if this isn't the right place for this sort of thing, please let me know and/or delete this thread.
This project all started when Lee Unkrich tweeted asking for 3D modellers to send him examples of their work as he was looking for help with a personal project.
Now like any sensible human being, I love Pixar and Lee Unkrich is no small part of that wonderful company. He was co-director on Toy Story 2 (one of my all time favourites) and was putting the finishing touches to Toy Story 3 at the time. To put it simply, I am a gibbering fanboy and nearly broke my fingers attempting to reply to him quickly enough that he'd see it. So, fingertips smouldering, I sent him a link to my personal and professional websites, he liked what he saw and filled me in on what he wanted...
It turned out that his daughter Alice had designed a 'Wonder Remote' - a fantastic piece of equipment that allowed the owner to do pretty much everything. Lee wanted her idea to be fleshed out as a 'real' product so this was my take Alice's concept (Note - I wasn't the only 3D guy to do this, but I can't for the life of me find the others online any more
).
I originally wanted to have all of the buttons light up but I never got round to making the separate materials for each one, so this is as close as I got
There were a few elements where I had to take a creative leap of faith on what Alice's intentions were
Not only was this huge fun to do it also gave me a chance to dust off the technical modelling part of my brain, I mostly do organic/character driven work these days so it was refreshing to go back to fillets, booleans...etc.
From a technical perspective the modelling was all done in MoI which is a fantastic cheap package. I used to model in Rhino many moons ago and MoI is basically 'Rhino SuperLite', which is perfect for me. Rendering was all done in 3ds Max using V-Ray.
It was a really great project with lots of great mini challenges to tackle, I especially enjoyed coming up with the extra little touches (such as the 'AU' branding/rockets...etc.). I'm sorry to say I never did solve the issue of having it fold up into a tiny square, however I am reliably informed that this feature would have an impact on manufacturing costs should it ever make it to market. Seriously though, the most satisfying part of all was getting this feedback from Lee and Alice:
“This is incredible! I was hoping someone would do an “actual product” kind of thing. Alice was very thrilled!”
Along with this
Anyway, I hope this is of interest to any of you guys and if not, then I apologise! If anyone has any questions or crits about it I would love to hear from you.
Cheers!
AJ
