- Mighty Giant: Whoops I Missed the Bus (Graphics) -
Brief
This was one of the first briefs I worked on back in 2015.
I worked with Mighty Giant to create the titles and graphics for the TV series 'Whoops I Missed the Bus'.
My role was to come up with a concept (based on moodboard images provided), create the 3D visuals (modelling, lighting, texturing; excluding the background wall of images), animate the bus model and robotic arms, and create some of the camera moves.
I also worked updating the graphics for various spin-offs and seasonal versions.
Approach
I began with a couple of sketches to show the overall concept: one of the bus, and one of the bus opened up with robotic arms popping out. I then quickly mocked up these two sketches in 3D, with a few extra camera angles of the robotic arms and devices. I applied lighting and materials, and rendered a few frames to demonstrate the concept.
It was admittedly a rather bizarre concept, but it seemed to go down quite well.
Developing the Visuals
Now that the concept was approved, I started sketching out more visuals to detail the robotic bus with. I then took these sketches, and created them in 3D.
Top row: initial sketches.
Bottom row: 3D models based on the sketches.
Bottom row: 3D models based on the sketches.
Animating the Bus
I split the bus into 2x3x3 segments, adjusted the anchor point of each segment, and simply animated their positions and rotations. After that, I filled the bus with the robotic arms, and animated them popping out as soon as the bus opened up.
Apart from animating positions and rotations, I used Xpresso for some of the mechanisms and a custom rig for cable animations*.
*It's been a long time since I last worked on this project, but I'm sure I would've used either: Tracer with nulls, or IK-splines.
Once everything was rigged and animated, it was a case of creating camera moves for each of the graphics - including the title sequence, transitions, overlays, and credits. To clarify, I didn't do all of the camera moves.
Rendering
The 3D graphics were rendered in C4D's Physical renderer, and then passed to the director to be composited (i.e. creating alpha from the device screens, adding content to device screens, post effects, etc).
More Information
Additional info about this project can be found here:
- https://mightygiant.co.uk/work/whoops-i-missed-the-bus-titles/
- https://mightygiant.co.uk/work/whoops-i-missed-the-bus-titles/
