American Airlines tapped Sector 5 Digital to make a new friendly International Arrivals video. The team ran into some trouble on the characters, so I was brought in to help. The problem at hand was that we needed them done quick! All of the characters that you see on this page were designed and modeled over 72 hours!
My original concept for the characters was inspired by a number of different character designs that I researched. These two characters were created in Photoshop. AA loved the treatment so much that they gave us a quick approval to move forward.
This is our female airport customer service character. They were happy with her, and the only change we made was to make her earrings smaller.
This is our male airport customer service character. He was intended to have deeper skin tones, which didn’t really read well in the first round due to the smooth specularity of the material. We deepened the skin tones a bit, but otherwise he stayed pretty much the same.
This is our female in-flight customer service character. We explored masculine and feminine wardrobe options. In some parts of the video, we might have either or both walking around the airport. We wanted to be mindful of gender identity and individuality.
This is our male in-flight customer service character. He managed to make it through from start to finish without any changes. Within the first 24 hours of this exercise, we were able to get approval to move forward with these characters and start working on the supporting cast.
Using the main cast as a guide, I created 12 unique ladies to help populate the airport. We were going for a very broad and diverse range. Additionally, the color tones were on a texture atlas that allowed for randomization. So these 12 ladies could become dozens of unique characters.
The same approach was taken in building out the 12 gentlemen models. In both instances, male and female, we also included multicultural clothing. And we have plans to further expand that to more cultures as well.
We also needed a few kiddos as well. They are also on a texture atlas, so you can randomize their pallet and generate tons of kids!
Last but not least, the Customs Officers! Same story here, we have male and female variations that can be shuffled to create lots of unique officers.
The images below are from the International Arrivals video. I've included them here to show you how the characters were used. That said, I did not animate them or work on the actual video. I just supplied the characters. The video was directed by Doug Fidler and the artist was Jon West.
At the end of it, I tossed on some quick rigs and dance animations for a little dance party. It was just a fun thing I did for the folks over at AA.
SHAWN HAWKINSON -AKA- LITTLE WIZARD STUDIOS
Copyright © 2024 Shawn Hawkinson, Little Wizard Studios - All Rights Reserved.
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