Client: Gessnerallee

Agency: Hammer

Live-Action Footage: Tillo Spreng

My role: 3D-Character Creation, Rigging, Animation

When Hammer approached me to recreate the Gessnerallee Octopus mascot in 3D their main goal was to be able to integrate the character into the the theaters diverse trailers. 

I wanted to get as close as possible to the original 2D-Illustrations by Tomiris. The challenge of the project was to create a stylized Octopus that was easily integrated into live-action backdrops. I created a lot of iterations of the skin shader and eyes regarding color and the amount of stylization until we settled with the final design.

It was clear from the start that the characters rig needed to be quiet flexible to match the illustrations, so I spent a lot of time with the rigging part of the project.

When talking about Octopuses we needed to talk about the eight legs or in this case six legs and two arm. I created a rig for the legs that made it possible to have them strech in a cartoony, pushed style without having the sucction cups deform in an unaesthetic way. Using a combination of constraints and deformers gave me the possibility to freely slide the cups along the tentacles.

Hammer gave me a lot of freedom regarding the animation. After they briefed me with the rough outline I could pitch them ideas for the animation with a rough blocking of the Octopus. This made it easy to explore the character which was already quiet defined through the 2D-Illustrations by Tomiris.

Up until now the Octopus‘ appeared in 18 trailers for their theater cycles, as a print sujet in magazines, posters and on Gessnerallees website as a loading widget.

I’m very happy with the final animations and very thankful for the possibility to work together with Hammer on this fun character.