6 Monsters

Computers can make metal boxes very well. Everything else is a bit tougher.

Rather than make Buck the Cat into a metal box (which may be a bit too much interpretation of the character on our part), we decided to go all out and make him have a realistic “cat like” surface.

CG fur is tricky, because aside from the whole look of the thing, you have to think about how the fur will behave once it moves around. Since Buck is a very toony cat, we plan on having a lot of squash and stretch. Chris Boylan, our rigger extrordinaire, is going to be putting in a ton of controls to allow us to squish this guy up into as many cool poses as possible. I wanted to make sure the fur would hold up and not show any bald spots or other weirdness as the underlying surface deformed.

This is our first test of dark fur. We added some purple just to make it interesting.

Here’s a look at a Quicktime of our first shot at it:

Furball Test

I think the squash and stretch test was a success overall. The next round of tests will be to see if we can get distinct patterns in the fur, and if they will hold up as well as the solid color fur does.

Keep watching this space.

Floyd Bishop