Meet the MiniMates

Some of the favored projects of my school are those featuring C3 Minimates, which are Lego compatible action figures. These little guys are quite detailed and poseable, and are rather simplistic in their geometry. This makes them excellent candidates for CG animation teaching tools.

We were given some footage of a video monitor with several of the figures on top. We were also given pre-generated and rigged versions of Batman and Wolverine. We were told they should interact with each other. They should convey a theme. At least one should pass behind an existing figure in the video. Beyond that, be creative. Oh yeah... it's about 15 seconds long, and they have to remain perfectly still for the first four.

Well, I'm not done yet. It's due tomorrow at 12:30pm. But I have a low-resolution copy of the video uploaded, so I thought I'd give you a preview. I hope you enjoy it!



For the critics... here's the list of "known defects". I don't know how well you can see them in the embedded video.

• Shadow issues. There's a new render of the monitor shadows in progress. Right now, they cross on top of several characters where they shouldn't.
• A non-existent Minimate is reflected in the front edge of the monitor. This is a "stand-in" for Frodo Baggins so Frodo can cast a shadow on Wolverine when appropriate. A new reflections render has already been generated.
• General lighting issues and such.

These aside, I'm pretty happy with it. By the end of these projects, I always have a dozen things I'd like to fix, but you have to set cutoff points. Otherwise, I'd still be working on what I consider to be rather hefty "smoothness" issues in the motion of the characters.

By the way, did you get that Batman thinks he's Buzz Lightyear in this? Think of the scene where Woody first confronts him on Andy's bed. :)