Creating a Stop Motion Video with a 3D Animation of Toy Story's Sid

#Animation #Feature #Interviews #Blender #Substance 3D Painter #Character Animation

JuanCarlos CR shared how he created the Digital Stop Motion Animation, talking about the modeling, how he used Rigify to rig the characters, how he textured the human character and the toys differently, and explaining how he animated the scene.

Introduction

Hola! My name is Juan Carlos CR. I'm a Spanish 3D Artist based in Tokyo. Over the past few years, I've worked across TV animation and video games, partnering with incredible creative people. Storytelling is my passion. I am currently wrapping up my short film, "The Boy Who Found a Door," acting as both producer and director.

The project I'm breaking down today began as a side experiment, a proof of concept for a "Digital Stop Motion" video. Beyond just creating a "Stop Motion" like sequence, I wanted to include the animator in the frame as a character, like a behind-the-scenes video.

Pixar's Toy Story from 1993 remains one of my favorite stories of all time, and I loved the idea that, after the events of the movie, Sid might have channeled his creative energy into becoming a professional stop-motion artist.

Digital Stop Motion Workflow

I started by modeling and rigging three main characters: Duck, Legs, and Sid. I tweaked the original designs to give them my own stylized proportions and vibe.

For the rigging, I've been using the Rigify tool inside Blender. It's an incredibly versatile workflow that allows all sorts of custom rigs.

Texturing

After exporting the models to Substance 3D Painter, I focused on the material contrast. I wanted a clear distinction between the "toy plastic" and the more organic look of the human character.

My approach to texturing is similar to my modeling technique, only adding what is necessary. I start with a solid base color and build up using gradients and subtle surface details to break up the specular highlights. An old habit I still use from the days when baking tools were less reliable in Substance 3D Painter is keeping my models in an exploded view to have clean bakes without
projection artifacts. With the characters finished, I model and texture a simple version of Sid's room to serve as my backplate and environment.

Lookdev & Animation

At this stage, I wanted to test the scale. It was very important to see how the models interacted to make sure they feel like small toys in a larger world, and not just scaled-down characters.

Once the look was established, I moved on to the part I was most excited about: the stop-motion video. I modeled and rigged a stop-motion character holder (a "rig" for the rig, basically). This meant I had three different systems interacting. I decided to make the Toy the "master" object. I attached the character holder and Sid's hands to the toy's hip.

For the animation, I moved the toy and let the other two follow. The "Stop Motion" effect itself was achieved by:

Animating the toy on twos
Switching between 10 hand poses in a loop to mimic the frame-by-frame adjustment of a real stop motion animator
Adding motion blur to some of the frames
Slow camera zoom into the scene

Conclusion

There is always room for improvement, specifically in the hand movements and nailing that "Stop motion Behind the Scenes" vibe. I've already moved on to a new experiment, where I'm recording hand animations directly in Blender using a Meta Quest 3.

I hope to develop this workflow further and perhaps return for another visit to 80 Level in the future! Huge thanks to the team for the opportunity to share my work. Feel free to reach out via juancarloscr.com and Instagram. では、また! (See you next time!)