Mr. Brahms

And then there was Brahms.

Based on a character I wrote for my friend Mark Mushakian, yes THAT Mark Mushakian of markmushakian.net, I used the mesh from Collinsworth and rearranged it to resemble Mush. I took some liberties here and there, but the unibrow is pretty accurate!

The struggle at first was making a second unique character from the same mesh previously used. I fiddled with this for a week and then realized there were shape keys on this head. I turned on the smile and really became inspired. Everything was downhill from there.

And then I saw a tutorial on BlenderGuru.com about applying hair particles to characters. Instantly, I thought it would be perfect to have a bushy unibrow on that face, but if I committed to that, I’d have to apply particle systems to each of the characters meaning render times would kill me. But just for fun, I gave it a shot.

Brahms does not have an armature installed yet and there are more adjustments to the mesh to be made, but overall I’m happy with the result and will move on to the next of the five characters.

A brief note about the Collinsworth model and my attempt at lip syncing – the majority of my work was a failure, but I learned many things from the process. My final attempt was sufficient and gave me reason to believe this whole project was doable. Lip syncing a puppet is really only difficult if the artist makes it so. I was reminded of the muppets – those things don’t form sounds with their mouths, they just go open and closed really fast. While I am going to be a wee bit more intricate than that, I won’t soon forget the lessons I’ve learned from studying Kermit!