Digital Hyper was hired by Charlotte Center City to work on an intro for the Novant Health Thanksgiving Parade. The Parade was aired on WBTV who used this piece in a larger open. Robert Krumbine and David Snapp worked with Digital Hyper to create a fun character animated intro that introduced some of their characters in the parade. Queen Charlotte was the head of the show, followed by a couple of Segwalloons (a Robert Krumbine invention) then finally a big foot comes into the picture to introduce Umino, the big elf.

The Novant Health Thanksgiving Parade show was a success and the intro brought an extra touch of entertainment. Both Robert Krumbine and David Snapp were pleased with the intro. The characters were all modeled and animated in 3ds max. The project had a quick turnaround, so Jamie Byers had to do creative rigs to get the characters moving. Luckily, most of them did not require complicated rigs. The characters themselves were modeled based on pictures provided from Charlotte Center City.

You don’t always have the luxury to sit down and sketch all your ortho views or to plan very elaborate animations. Jamie Byers had to put together six different organic models, texture and do environment work. For the environment work, Turbosquid came in handy. Not only that, Digital Hyper hired Dieter Wagner on as character animator. Jamie had enough on his plate between modeling, texturing and rigging. Lighting was pretty simple, just a Vray Sunlight with a physical camera. The most complicated part of the job was working on the cloth sim for Queen Charlotte. Technical issues like the cloth sim is what makes you a better CG generalist. You just continue to learn from your mistakes and understand how to solve those for future projects faster.