Ashnikko – Worms – Music Video

Ashnikko - Worms - Music Video

Production Company: Blinkink

My role: Rigging and animation

Project

When the director Raman Djafari approached me if I wanted to be part of this project I was sure that this was going to be a blast. Lots of fun creatures, a monstertruck and giant Gunadam-Like robots in a epic battle. This sounded like an animators dream.

Rigging

Because of the huge cast of characters it was clear that the rigging process needed to be fast. I built modular rigs for wings, eyes and tentacles which I could reuse for the different characters to be as efficient as possible.

The Ashnibot character got a special treatment because it was Ashnikkos Mech and the hero character of the clip. I added a lot of custom controls to her including detailed weapon handles.

Monstertruck

The monstertruck rig used a dynamic rig that automatically reacts to the ground and adjusts hydraulics, the cars orientation and rotation of the wheels. We baked this animation then to the manual rig which gave us more control over the overall movement of the vehicle. Aditionally the rig contained a facial and a wing rig to make the truck an actual character itself.

Animation

Raman decided early on to go for a stop-motion like animation style which fits his world and character design. So all the animators were animating on 2s and only locomotion and slowmotion shots were done on 1s. This sped up the animation process alot and made everything feel more stylized.

Workflow for flying creatures

Because there was a vast amount of flying creatures in the clip I developed a quick workflow to customize the flying patterns for the characters. Starting with a general flight cycle I used spaceswitching to change up the position and direction of the creatures which made it possible to iterate quickly to notes and feedback, by adjusting the weight of animation layers in Blender.

Animated Shots

Conclusion

This was one of the most fun project I was lucky enough to be part of so far. The variety of things to animate and rig was a dream come true for any animator. Raman Djafari created a great cast of characters and a fascinating world to be creative in. Additionally the whole animation crew was a blast to work with and seeing their work on a daily basis was a huge inspiration. Everyone of the team brought their own strengths to the project, Harry Bhalerao, Nate Die, Barney and Raman Djafari.

And in the end it was amazing to see Ashnikkos fans react to this crazy videoclip.