Goblin vs Dwarf pt. 1
Short film inspired by stop-motion, made with Noah Fog. I was responsible for the dwarf and all the sound design.
- Role
- The dwarf and all the sound design (with Noah Fog)
- Tools
Blender
Cycles
After Effects
- Technology
- Character animation / sound design
- Format
- Pre-rendered animation
Introduction
Goblin vs Dwarf Pt. 1 is a short film I made with Noah Fog as an exercise in character animation. It is inspired by traditional stop-motion, and the goal was to give life to two fantasy characters with a handmade, frame-by-frame look in a 3D pipeline.
The dwarf in 3D
The dwarf is a model from HeroForge that I developed further for the film. Here you can rotate around him and switch between a pose with his arms down and the T-pose the rig is built in. For the web, the model has been made lighter, with around 30,000 polygons instead of 81,600, and the materials are combined into four textures.
- Switch between pose and T-pose
- Drag to rotate, scroll or pinch to zoom
Contribution
I was responsible for the dwarf and all the sound design, and Noah did the goblin and the environment. I worked on giving the dwarf's movements weight and on sound that supports the rhythm of the scene.
Reflection
We learned that small imperfections such as slightly offset timing, asymmetric poses and textured light can make digital animation look like something handmade. The result looks like the stop-motion style we had planned.
Production
The character models came from HeroForge and were sponsored by 3D College Danmark. We cleaned up the meshes, rigged them and carried the stiffness and timing of stop-motion over into digital movement. The hardest part was the balance between stylisation and believability.