The Task

Genies, Inc. was rolling out a new product feature allowing users to more creatively express themselves in more abstract forms of identity through “dolls.” The new initiative posed a challenge for all the art departments, from creative through rigging and R&D. Once the “floating limbs” style was established as a solution that fulfills both the creative and technical requirements, the modeling team faced a few new challenges.

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My Approach

We had to quickly adapt to a less familiar and less consistent art style, with no style guide or art bible, so this task felt like wading into new creative waters for the team. We explored hair cards for some of the “furrier” characters, and I started building out a smart materials library for types of textures that we previously hadn’t needed to use before--things like wool, fur, and scales, authoring them in Substance Designer to give the rest of the modelers control over some basic parameters to customize the look of their doll. I also created many common variations of hands with correct topology for the modelers to use as a base mesh depending on the number of fingers and finger arrangement, as each Doll still needed to use the same rig.

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