Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/57248
■ ■ ■ ■ Modeling Growums is more than just fun and games. The intent is to use the CG characters to teach folks, particularly children, about caring for their real-world crops and learning healthy eating habits. name has to be entertaining before you ever see the character, and the character has to be entertaining before hearing them speak, and the dialog has to be clever before you ever hear the voice and see the character." Each character starts out as a concept—a name and type of vegetable. From there, char- acter designer Gavin Dell draws a black-and- white pencil sketch in a pose that expresses the character's personality. Once the team is happy with the look, Payne models it in 3D, creating the color palette and detail. Next, he renders out the body in parts and layers, so he can puppeteer the characters in SwishZone's Swish Max Flash, using vector-based facial features. He even gives voice to the characters (literally and digitally) with Sony Sound Forge, record- ing the voice-overs and mixing in the musical sound track with the cartoons. Scene lighting, devised using Maya 2010, is kept bright and colorful. Adobe's Photoshop Creative Suite is used to generate simple, soft brush-stroke textures for most of the main sur- faces. In fact, the artist uses solid-color shaders in the scene, keeping the look simple with just a diff use layer. "We didn't even do specular or normal maps; we kept the look very cartoon- like," Payne says. Th e creation process takes approximately two weeks to complete one "classroom," which teaches four lessons for a particular garden's growth stage. A content delivery system, built in- house, serves up the content, which is timed to the growth rate for each individual garden. "It's all about keeping the process as simple as possible, and that is the secret to its success," says Payne. "Th ere's no red tape." While spades and hoes are common garden tools in the real world, for the cyber garden, the team uses Maya, Photoshop CS3, Swish Max 3.0 animation tool, and Ryan Clark's CrazyBump, in addition to Flash and Sound Forge, to sow and grow their imagery. Afterward, the artists determine where the character will live in this cyber world, "and 44 February/March 2012 that starts the creative process again," notes Payne. "What's the name of the building or background? What vegetable or herb can it be built from? Nothing is just for function alone; it has to be entertaining." Southern California-based Digital Backlot handles all the visuals, game design, and audio for the project, while Florida-based Growums, managed by Mauricio Abela, handles the art for the product line, the marketing de- sign, and the product's Web site. Meanwhile, Marco Bucci, located in Canada, heads up the environment concept designs for the upcom- ing MMO game, which are then handed off to Payne for 3D modeling and coloring. Swish Max is used to animate the characters for the online virtual classroom. Developing the Characters While each character challenged the artists in some way or another, those that caused the most growing pains were the herbs, "hands down," says Payne. "We tried using pots with faces and the herb in question as hair. But they were just too simplistic-looking compared to the other Growums characters we designed earlier. It didn't fi t into my vision because the thing that elevates the characters is the clothes, and the pots didn't have bodies." Payne explains that he wanted Growums to be almost human—in the way that Bugs Bun- ny is to a real rabbit. Sometimes, though, he had to scale back on the design because they were too human-like. "Th ey are vegetables and herbs fi rst," Payne adds. In the end, the herbs were redesigned, with the exception of Baby Basil, which remains pot- ted. "Th at made sense, being the tiniest character," Payne adds. "Now we have Elvis Parsley, Frank Cilantro, and Re- gan O. Th ose are my favorites." When asked if there is any particu- lar veggie that the group is avoiding, Payne jokingly says, "brussels sprout." While he may avoid eating them per- sonally, the artist says that all vegetables will be considered for Growums. Payne, naturally, sees his characters as one of a kind. "I wanted them to be more than non- descript vegetables with googly eyes. I wanted them to be almost human, mascots for the vegetable they are supposed to represent, so the plant itself has more texture reality to it," he says. Moreover, the characters have occu- pations and personas. And, the clothing they wear says a lot about who they are. "Th e biggest [diff erentiator] is the anima- tion technique we're employing," notes Payne. "Th e bodies are rendered in 3D but all the facial expressions are vector-based, giving us a hybrid technique we think is original. It gives us the power of 3D with an aff ordable facial library that loads quickly, making them much more than traditional vector-based characters." Perhaps Ferraro and the Growums gang are on to something. "We started seeing an overwhelming reaction to [the characters], and that got us excited," says Payne. "But cute characters aren't enough. It's the combination of tying the online world to the real world that gets people on board. And it's a clever new way to get kids eating vegetables." Taking Root In addition to the MMO, there are Growums partnerships and products that will be released soon. "Growums is going to go prime time, as they say," Payne says with a deliber- ate hint. By creating characters that could scale and be "their own" from the onset, he believes they will be a perfect ingredient to any project. "We don't want to stop at the gardens; we feel we have the op- portunity to expand into other lines and possibly videos or cartoon-type of programs for kids to watch on Satur- day mornings," Payne says. Meanwhile, the product and online classroom has been basking in attention lately, and the Web site traffi c growing daily. "Aside from getting kids excited about growing healthy food, [this in- tegrated off ering] is showing how 3D elevates an otherwise basic concept, like gardening, into a fun, interac- tive 'live' world," says Payne. What delicious food for thought. ■ Use your smart- phone to access related video. Karen Moltenbrey chief editor of . is the Graphics W Computer orld