KidCo is a childrens app development company whose flagship application introduces kids to learning more about their finances and saving money in a fun and educational environment.

I was approached by KidCo to translate their existing character concepts into 3D models. The brief was to make them look toy-like and create pre-rendered images and animations of the characters for use within the app. The final models were also to  be supplied should the company wish to take a real-time 3D approach to the app, which was still in early development at the time.

After receiving the initial brief and character concepts my first  step was create colour swatches of each character. The concept had a strong, bold style and I wanted to remain as faithful to the original colour schemes and shapes as possible. Following this stage I then looked at the basic shapes to see what parts of the models could be shared across all 3 characters: arms, legs, body. This helped to make the modelling and UV process so much quicker.

Each character was built, rigged and animated using 3Ds Max with texture baking and authoring completed in Substance Painter.

The characters were then taken into Marmoset Toolbag for final still and animation renders.

Recently KidCo have re-branded and the characters are no longer in use however creating these models was a lot of fun.