Sunday, July 8, 2007

Super Wu-Man - The Phenomenon?

In 2006, as the Blender World Cup was underway, a star was born on the Blenderartists forums. Forum member Wu (real name Eric... surname won't be mentioned due to his paranoia) boasted long and loudly about his natural superiority in all things Blender - and all things non-Blender for that matter. Wu's forum friend Sago (Sacha Goedegebure) soon dubbed him "Wu-Man" and presented a caricature to the amusement of the other World Cup competitors and followers. Wu soon became known as Super Wu and Super Wu-Man, a name Wu himself ultimately adopted. Some less-than-polite members tended to refer to him as Super Wo-man - but that's another story.





As my entry in part two of the challenge, themed "Sneaky Tactics", I "borrowed" Sago's caricature (I asked permission), modelled a 3D Super Wu and depicted him trying to blow up other competitors.

Following from this, I embarked on animating our larger-than-life super hero and what better way to depict a self-proclaimed womaniser and all-round super hero than to see him sitting alone on a park bench singing "I can't stand to fly"? Every test render of this animation brought a tear to my eye :)

Although I've only used the first verse of the song and did so for educational purposes, copyright paranoia prevents me posting it here for public consumption. Hopefully the still image tells the story.




THANKS: Special thanks go to Sacha Goedegebure (Sago) for allowing people to take his design and mess with it as they pleased. His brilliant cartoon style and quick wit has seen Sago appointed to lead the next Blender Foundation open movie production, code-named Project Peach. Thanks must also go to Eric the nameless (Super Wu-Man) for being a good sport and not only giving people a whipping post but often starting or joining in with the whipping.

1 comment:

Dimentional said...

yay for the Wu-ness! mMmMm-yeah! >.< btw the video of super-wu on the bench rocked
- Felix :)