T0-B1 - Droid Jedi

Breakdown: Planning

This project was primarily based on Takafumi Hori's production concept art. Part of the intent of this project was to turn this loveable character into a practical and mechanical looking character that still had the same charm as T0-B1 in the short. I knew translating his design into 3D would be a challenge, so I looked elsewhere for some inspiration.

I came across fan art from Martin Gee and Paulo Santos that both had a mode three-dimensional take on his design and that gave me a better idea on how to design the character model.

Breakdown: Model Progression, Texturing, and Rigging

Breakdown: Unreal Engine 5

One change I made to his design was I made his face into a sort of CRT screen and used a flipbook material to animate it. I had to draw each frame and then compile it into a high resolution sprite sheet texture. I also added a subtle flicker function to the material to add a little believability to the look.

For the render, I wanted to emulate the art style of the original short, especially with the painterly backgrounds. I knew I was going to go for a cell-shaded look with an outline, but wasn't sure how to go about the painterly aesthetic for the background until I learned about the Kuwahara Filter by Acerola.

I learned about the Kuwahara Filter and came across a tutorial of a material utilizing a custom code node with a snippet written in C++. I also relied on tutorials to develop the cell-shading and outline PPVs along with adding a stencil mask functionality to mask out the character.

Based on a tutorial by Matthijs Verkuijlen: https://youtu.be/JJZBd7Zu0Ug?si=8TXzpKrExOJwo4ED

Based on a tutorial by Evans Bohl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KvUfnrHcqM

Based on a tutorial by PrismaticaDev: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkFwe7JI8R8