2-D in 3-D! (Gorillaz) - Making Of & Renders

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(Edited)

A weekee-greeting to all Hivers!! Well, I'm sure most of you have seen this character somewhere at least once in your life. On my last days of vacations I developed an obsession with Gorillaz' work. I already had a few songs from them in my playlist but that was the time when I fully got into research just to know more about them and their backstory, including the lore from the characters that represent each of them which is in my opinion hella creative and sick!

I could write a post about the band and the musicians themselves but it would be boring, Wikipedia does that for you. So I'm going to quickly tell you the lore behind this fictional character, the one that is and represents the singer of the band (Damon Albarn), globally known as 2-D, all this while I show you the pictures of my making process of 2-D phase #1, my favorite version of him :3


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But BEFORE you keep reading please turn on your volume and listen to this Gorillaz song so you can enjoy the experience even more :D (bad jokes are waiting down there)

The actual fictional character's name is Stuart Harold, and actually yes, he used to have eyes. That was before a moron purposely crashed his car against the shop Stuart worked on and accidentally ran him over. Stuart lost his first eye and entered a vegetative state.
A total disgrace.

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official music video I got the frames from

That idiot was actually Murdoc Niccals, a guy who was looking forward to make a band. He got to jail for what he did, and also he was charged to take responsibility of the poor Stuart everyday, and one day when he took him in his car he crashed again when trying to make a 360 deegree spin to impress girls. Stuart flew through the windscreen. The harsh contact with the pavement made him come back to consciousness, but he lost his other eye.
Another total disgrace.

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Murdoc saw him stand up like a rising black-eyed god and heard him speak, probably asking what had happened or where he was, but Murdoc was not caring of his words, just listening and thinking he was the perfect candidate to sing in his band. He nicknamed Stuart "2-D" because of the two disgraces he caused to him, and Stuart liked it. That's how it all begun.

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As you see so far, I have modelled the whole body. I used the Rigify blender tool with the advanced human template to make the rigging fast and effectively.

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Very proud of how the hands articulate.

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👍

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I left the hair modelling process for later, since it doesn't affect anything. I made the clothes and set the colors, then started posing him for tests.

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Time to un-bald him, it was getting weirder and weirder to see him still bald; I used some 3D curves for the hair strands. I remember this part was very time and patience consuming, ended up remaking the hair twice.

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After hours of suffering being simplified in only those three pictures of the last hair try, this is the result :D

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I then started testing the face rig.

" :3 "

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*screams in agony

That's because he's now suffered a third disgrace: he's now 3-D
I think I just modelled him to be able to tell the joke


...Anyways, his mouth looks like a bird's beak, literally a bird waiting for mom to bring some food. So I started modelling the teeth and tongue.

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And yes, he's missing those two because of the accidents.

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He's so handsome.

And now it's render time!

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He's smirking like "Call me". Only my bestie could give me this pose idea XD

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... I don't even know what this is, don't ask. I think my creativity got wasted when doing that because I literally had no idea of what to do or of what I was doing.

Even a whole set for that very random moment-

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I tried to make him stand up on the planet with such perspective but it ended up being so weird XD

And this is all! hope you enjoyed the post as well as the song and hope you get obsessed with Gorillaz too :D
Read you on the next one :3!


All images without a link reference are renders or screenshots of my progress in the Blender project. I did not use a translator

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3 comments
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(Edited)

Another great Blender post from you! Btw, is Rigify good enough for serious production use? I and the people I work with have not tried it on our projects, but it looks like it could handle simple up to medium character movement complexity.

I don't rig yet in Blender and I only know how to rig in Maya and some other software that Autodesk decided to "kill". Anyway, I am starting to learn how to rig in Blender by watching YouTube tutorials from this Blender rigging expert named CGDive.

Here is his channel. He has a comprehensive rigging tutorial there, the title is Rigging isn't Scary.

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Hey thanks! Actually, as an animator, I find rigify very comfortable at times. It works better with high complexity models, and it gives you a freedom to modify every single bone that amuses me. I personally love it and just for fun I have used it in some old models of mine to make animation and rigging practices, and after many failed attempts I eventually mastered how the tool works. It's hard to apply it correctly to any model but once you got the technique it's the most efficient and effective thing ever, truly a time saver specially for projects that need complex animations. There will be times though when making one from scratch is better, I sometimes prefer that because I know what I modelled and how I modelled it so I know how I need to move it.

About the video you showed me, I followed that exact same channel because they have a series specifically about how to use rigify. It's the best rigging tutorial series you'll find for rigify!!

If you want to learn about rigging in blender in general though, I recommend Joey Carlino's videos about it! He's my favorite out there, keeps things simple and best of the best at explaining. Hope this helps you out, good luck in your projects!

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Yes, I have just seen CGDive's Rigify tutorial and will try it out soon. And I've also just discovered that Rigify was used in the Blender Studio open movie Sprite Fright. Watch it if you haven't seen it yet. It's a great example of what Rigify is capable of, in the hands of good animators. 😃

I am in training at work and I am learning how to use Substance Painter and another texturing software named Instamat Studio, and that's why I cannot try out other things yet until I am done learning these two software. My boss likes to torture me a lot. 😂

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