Created by Michael Lynch, Peewees & Friends is a family of Designer Toys created with one clear vision : providing you with the ideal smoke buddy !
More info / order here.
I had the pleasure of taking the first Peewee to life, from 2D concept to creating a full stylized animated short teaser.
The teaser
The figurine
Live shots coming soon
concept
Below is the original sketches and sculpts provided by Michael.
Followed some back and forth until the character was solid enough to move on to the 3D phase.
3d model
The final sculpt approved for production, as well as some beauty shots and palette ideas. The 3D model was also split to facilitate the 3D printing process.
Final 3D model with colors
the teaser - behind the scenes
2d animatic
A few years have passed and we now enter production territory for good. The manufacturing is well on its way and Michael reaches out once more asking if I can create an animated short to advertise the figurine and announce the pre-order date.
The original idea was to have Adam walk into the vertical shot (social media friendly aspect-ratio), drop his bag, get a lighter and a joint, light it up, take a hit and blow the smoke at the screen, revealing the pre-order date. The challenge here was to rig and animate the character which were two aspects of 3D production I had almost never touched before. Pierrick Picaud’s course on rigging with Blender was a huge help in that regard. I’d also like to thank my good friend Guillaume Charrin for his feedback on the animation part.
The other challenge was to make the whole sequence entertaining to watch. This 2D animatic helped get a good feeling of composition and timing, although a good chunk of it ended up being changed in the end…
Behind the scenes video
Creating the trailer for Adam was a very interesting challenge. It required knowledge in many different fields of expertise, from retopology to composing a catchy soundtrack for it.
Everything you see in the trailer has been crafted with patience and love, from scratch, with the exception of a few sound effects and some samples that were grabbed from Splice.
If loading is too slow watch the second one (youtube-hosted)