01Vehicle Rotations in 3D
Clay and toon turntables of both cars, played in sync, used to check the 3D models against the 2D designs from every angle.
Yuki’s car
Spike’s car (end boss)
Yuki car design: 2D reference and 3D render
Smashdown is an animated action-comedy racing project in which kids build, race and wreck their vehicles. The characters and backgrounds were 2D. My job was the vehicles: building the 2D car designs in 3D, toon-rendering them to read as flat 2D animation, and compositing them into the 2D scenes.
Clay and toon turntables of both cars, played in sync, used to check the 3D models against the 2D designs from every angle.
Toon shading, line tests and rig tests: flat colour fills, hard-edged shadow bands and ink-style outlines, tuned until the cars matched the drawn style.
The 2D sheets came first. Each car was modelled to the rotation sheet, and turntable renders were checked against the drawings (the comparison sheet above) so the silhouette held from every angle.
Next came look development. Grey clay passes confirmed the forms. Toon tests on single parts, like the wheel, then on whole cars, replaced realistic shading with flat fills and hard shadow bands, and added an outline pass so the cars carried the same ink line as the hand-drawn characters.
The cars were tested in motion with rig tests, with and without lines, to make sure the outlines stayed stable as the cars moved.
Compositing came last. Each shot was rendered in layers: the car on its own, with a separate alpha and line matte, ready to go over the 2D background plate. In After Effects the layers were combined, colour-matched to the backgrounds, given motion blur and finished. Scene 15 shows the progression from a grey-world test, to the car over the background, to the final comp.