3D Character Animation Production
CGI ANIMATION DRIVEN BY ENGAGING CHARACTERS, IMMERSIVE WORLDS, AND GRIPPING STORIES
The industry-leading 3D animation studio for the film, TV, gaming, and commercial industries. Deep Sky is a full-service production company of directors, producers, artists, and more who produce projects from the initial character design to animation to the final render.
We’ve collaborated with the world’s most influential brands, agencies, studios, and talent to create engaging content across a variety of platforms, both as the lead creative and a service production studio.
Featured Projects
Superplastic
Social Media Animations & Character Renderings
Animated content for Superplastics virtual influencer's social media accounts, including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and special events.
Bleacher Report
Sports-Themed Animated Shorts
Featuring stars from the NFL and NBA - our 3D social media shorts have accrued millions of views each time for Bleacher Report.
MG
Live-Action / VFX Automotive Commercial
Filmed in Amsterdam, our in-house CGI chimp (and digital siblings) star in this international spot for the automotive brand MG.
Our Content
• Commercials
• Music Videos
• Shorts
• Social Content
• TV Series
• Films
• Video Games
• Documentaries
• Virtual Influencers
• Virtual Reality (VR)
• Augmented Reality (AR)
• Unreal Engine
Our Process
Character Development & Modeling
Taking your character from concept to 3D
Taking inspiration from your story and vision, we explore various styles with you, determining which conveys the personality and message most effectively. The characters are developed in order to interact with their environment as intended, from how they move around to how they express emotion in their facial expressions. Once a style or design is decided, we create a plain 3D sculpt that incorporates accurate topology. This is the basis for early animation tests before applying colors, textures, and shading.
Texture & Paint
Enriching your character’s look
Starting with the plain 3D sculpted model, we breathe more life into the character through things like color, texture and reflectivity. The texture maps can be created using a variety of methods ranging from 2D painting, 3D scanning or photogrammetry, or painting directly on the 3D model. Our artists will paint on colors and gradients that properly interact with light, giving a more natural appearance to things like clothing.
Rigging
Creating an efficient animation pipeline—finalizing the pre-animation process
In one of the final pre-production steps, we give the character a skeletal structure through rigging. We establish their rules for movement, which allows our team to animate them efficiently and precisely. And for quick reference, our team produces character sheets showing the character in t-pose and some other key poses.
Hair, Fur, & Cloth
Grooming and fitting your character
Generally we generate/groom hair and fur to characters before animation begins. Fur can change the appearance of a character so we visualize this ahead of time for approval and allow client modifications. We utilize tools like density and color maps to add realistic clumping, textures, and colors. For human hair, this may be applied at a later time to allow animators to begin. Clothing is applied before or after this stage when simulated, allowing artists to groom the hairs under the garments. Cloth simulation is applied after animation cleanup by a technical director, this is done in Cinema 4D, Maya, or Marvelous.
Motion Capture & Animation
Performance capture and real-time animation
By utilizing our rigs and controllers set up during pre-production, the characters are ready to be animated. Our in-house motion capture studio offers a full suite of services including body, face and hand capture, an expert team of on-site technical director, and data cleaning capabilities. After mocap data is captured, our team cleans up the keyframe animation, eliminating any inconsistencies in the form of the character or its movements. This save an incredible amount of production time vs. traditional keyframe animation. Whether using traditional animation or our cutting-edge motion capture system, your character’s actions will be realistic or uniquely expressive.
Post Production
Integrating CG characters into 3D environments & live action plates
During animation production our team models and textures environments, props, and lights each scene. Character performance can be captured before or during this stage. Once animation is complete, and the characters and props have been fully integrated into the scene, our effects artists apply simulated effects, render, and composite. The final stage, our editor will color correct shots as needed for consistency, and sound designer finalizes any composed music bed and mix/master with sound effects and voice overs.
Scene Integration
