Marching Band
Small scale adventures
Let's have a look behind the scenes of a miniature studio project we call Marching Band.
This studio project led by Senior Creative, Robert Duncan, all began with a sketch of a little trumpeter – which led to other bandmates on the page. “I was really interested in toys
and shapes and just started exploring a few ideas to see what kind of primary shapes could make up this band,” says Robert. “I felt this could work really nicely as a game or AR toy.”
A collaborative process
We opened up the project and pooled everyone's ideas for consideration. "As the team and I started to explore some character designs, I thought it would be useful to establish some rules about the characters, like how their bodies were made up of simple shapes, how their arms and legs should
move, how simple spheres for their heads could incorporate little hats too, and how they each interact with their unique instruments." You can see how we liked the idea of the tuba characters being wrapped up in their instrument, whereas the drummers would use their bodies to make the beat.
Colour and form
Inspired by tin figures, wooden blocks and LEGO, we wanted the Marching Band to be a toy at heart. It’s comical, silly, bright and fun with both a tongue-in-cheek and earnest feel. When it came to motion, we started building and rigging the models in Cinema 4D, taking into
account the importance of scale between the different characters, which helped achieve the toy box feel. Because the characters are 3D but in low quality meshes (you can see the jagged edges in the shapes) we decided to embrace that with a simple, primary colour palette.
Finishing touches
In the final product, you can see all the elements come together – the dropdown animation of each of the icons, and the instruments that appear like they’re in a drawer, which nods to the physicality and charm of the toy box. The tempo wheel allows you to control the speed of the music and the characters.
"I really wanted this to feel like a real wheel by adding snapping and resistance, so it feels like some sort of elastic band stopping it from going too far," says Robert. Finally we added a record button with the red around the screen to make it obvious when you were recording, and a pink share screen as a call to action to share it online.
