{"id":252707,"date":"2025-05-22T21:25:19","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T21:25:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/animation\/death-to-squishies-blendernation\/"},"modified":"2025-05-22T21:25:19","modified_gmt":"2025-05-22T21:25:19","slug":"death-to-squishies-blendernation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=252707","title":{"rendered":"Death to Squishies – BlenderNation"},"content":{"rendered":"


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I asked Marcin Cie\u015bla to tell us about his ‘Death to Squishies’ animation that was featured on BlenderArtists in March<\/a>. Get ready for the delights and despairs of a one-man animation project which included dancing in front of his phone girl-band style for reference!<\/p>\n

A stort story about a certain animation. \u201cDeath to Squishies\u201d from Ratchet & Clank 3.<\/h2>\n

Ladies and gentlemen. Girls and boys. I rarely write texts like this\u2026 but not by choice. Only when my work is done, all set with poise, each detail aligned, no faults or voids. Now and then, when the time employs, it feels like festive days with all their noise. I\u2019m so happy, like a kid with toys! Let\u2019s start the talk – so raise your voice!<\/p>\n

…and Courtney strikes a daring pose, Perhaps it\u2019s time to end my prose.<\/del>
Alright, enough fooling around. I\u2019m not typing all of this just to waste someone\u2019s time with poor-quality rhymes. So, why are we here? Well, I\u2019d like to tell a story. To write a few words about how I spent almost two years working on a certain project – my biggest one yet. I personally love reading behind-the-scenes stories like this, so I thought someone might find it interesting. And if not, well, too bad – I\u2019ll just write it anyway, and no one can stop me – ha! Look, look, how I just write all of this.<\/p>\n

Ok man, what\u2019s your point?<\/h2>\n

…you may ask, my dear reader. I will answer brilliantly – I don’t know. That’s why I think it would be best if I started with a short explanation. In the year of our Lord 2023, I created a small fanart of a character from the Ratchet & Clank series. Specifically, I’m talking about Courtney Gears from Ratchet 3. In the description of this project, when I was finishing it, I mentioned that I might also try to create a 1-minute animation using the character model that I already had at the time. It was quite tempting considering that the goal seemed quite achievable, because in a sense part of the work was already done. At least that’s what I thought at the time. After all, I already have a finished character model – why not use it again and create an animation with it? What could go wrong (those familiar with Murphy’s law know very well what). Ah, the poor naive author of this text didn\u2019t yet realize what he was signing up for…<\/p>\n

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At the beginning, he created a new project and a scene.<\/h2>\n

The scene, however, was without form, it was a blockout. It is best to start any project like this with a blockout – a kind of 3D \u201csketch.\u201d You roughly and quickly arrange simple shapes in the scene to get a general idea of where things should be, what size they should have relative to other elements in the environment, and so on. That\u2019s exactly what I did. This stage of work is particularly satisfying because any progress brings immediate, tangible, and easily noticeable results. I drop a character into the file, but there\u2019s nothing around them – just emptiness. So, I create a simple floor and walls. Boom – suddenly, the whole perception of the scene changes completely. It\u2019s a bit dark, so I add a basic lamp. White, colored, spot, or area – whatever it may be, its mere presence makes a huge difference.<\/p>\n

Although every object in the scene, even in its simple blockout form, had to be manually created, it didn\u2019t take long before the first signs of progress started appearing before my eyes. Those first bursts of dopamine can be incredibly motivating. “Hey, this is actually going pretty smoothly,” I thought. And it did. You start a new project and you have only an empty space with a default cube and a camera in front of you. A day or two later, in the same file, you see a whole bunch of colorful, scattered objects. Maybe they are simple, maybe a little sloppy, but it doesn’t matter. Compared to what was there at the beginning (an empty 3D file), the progress is huge! You almost feel like patting yourself on the back. And although at this stage it seemed to me that I had already done a lot of work, in reality it was just a false first impression. The real work hadn’t even started yet.<\/p>\n

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Lights, action! Oh wait, the camera first.<\/h2>\n

Since the project was supposed to be an animation, I decided that before I went any further, I should roughly outline the camera work. An initial frame layout to see roughly where the close-ups would be, and what the slightly wider shots would look like. Which objects would need more detail, and which could get away with less. It seemed like a reasonable approach – after all, it would be a shame to spend too much time perfecting an object that wouldn\u2019t even be properly visible in the camera.<\/p>\n

My starting point, of course, was the original animation from Ratchet & Clank. The music video titled “Death to Squishies” contained all the guidelines I needed. In my version, I tried to preserve as much from the original as possible, so initially I simply replicated the camera movements one-to-one. This is where I ran into the first problem. What worked 20 years ago in PlayStation 2 graphics doesn’t necessarily translate well to modern visuals. Maybe I just couldn’t translate it properly – who knows. The fact is, however, that at the end of the day I slightly modified some shots and cuts. Not drastically, but still. A slightly different frame, maybe a cut half a second later, maybe a different camera movement pace. By the way, it\u2019s incredible how much such small adjustments can change.<\/p>\n

At this stage of the work, another dose of dopamine kicked in. Smaller than before, but still very motivating. “Not only do I already have the initial version of the scene, but now everything is starting to move! I’m moving at lightning speed, and nothing can stop me!”<\/p>\n

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Very nice, but now get to work.<\/h2>\n

It’s probably a confrontation with the later stages of the project, after that first wave of naive joy, what we call short-lived enthusiasm. You start something with joy, see the initial huge progress, and it seems like the work is moving at an express pace, with the finish line already appearing on the horizon. However, reality doesn’t really care about it and sooner or later it comes to verify the progress. The first such verification hit when I had to model the final version of the first segment of the scene. What had previously been just a simple, rounded cube was now waiting for its true realization. How dense should the details be, and where should they go? What should be fully modeled, and what could simply be painted onto a texture? What resolutions should the textures have? What colors should they be? You can know all the fundamentals of designing such things, and still get lost. For example, I realized that despite having reference material in the form of the original animation, I could really use designs with more detailed elements. Luckily, Insomniac still makes games from this series today, so I managed to find some modern assets from the latest Ratchet & Clank on PS5 on ArtStation. They worked perfectly as references. My confidence, however, was in a bit of a decline.<\/p>\n

As it quickly turned out, creating just one element of the scene in the final version takes much longer than the total time I worked on the entire project from the beginning up to that point. My example platform first had to be prepared in high-poly – a version with the highest possible level of detail. Then, the same model had to be created again, this time in low-poly – a geometrically simplified version for optimization. After that, details had to be baked from one version onto the other, textures painted, plus several other technical steps. Then the same thing had to be repeated for each element of the environment that was waiting to be prepared. Glass panels, inner platform segments, the outer ring with lamps, speakers, screens, scaffolding, cages, and so on. All of this only to realize later that while individual segments might look fine on their own, they didn\u2019t necessarily work well together as a whole. For this reason, I went back from time to time to slightly modify already existing parts of the scene. And time kept passing.<\/p>\n

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And he saw that it wasn’t very good…<\/h2>\n

Paradoxically, what had helped me earlier was now becoming a source of complexes for me. Using the stunning visuals from Rift Apart\u2014the latest Ratchet & Clank installment – was incredibly helpful at first. Over time, however, as more and more of my own objects filled the scene, a wave of self-doubt started creeping in. “This doesn\u2019t even look half as good as the work of the artists at Insomniac Games.” “Why am I even doing this?”<\/p>\n

For a long time, lighting had been bothering me. Light is one of the most important aspects of 3D graphics – period. In fact, the perceived quality of the final image depends more on the lighting than on the quality of the objects being illuminated. Seriously. Lighting is incredibly important. That said, I kept failing with every new attempt at lighting the scene. Too dark, too bright, the color palette came out ugly, sometimes it felt too flat, other times something got overexposed. I can’t count how many times I postponed dealing with it, discouraged by yet another failure. To be honest, I\u2019m still not satisfied with the final lighting. I simply had to draw the line somewhere and move on.<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t all bad. At this stage of the project, I had already modeled almost all the scene elements – that\u2019s something. A certain milestone. Mrs. Dopamine came for a visit again. A small dose of motivation to push further forward. After all, it would be silly to abandon the project now, with so much work behind me, right?<\/p>\n

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Wait, what was I talking about?<\/h2>\n

You’re talking so much nonsense here, Mr. Author, and this was supposed to be about animnantion. I’m asking where is aminantion! So where is it? This amimatnion!<\/p>\n

A fair question. Maybe a little clumsy, but fair. So, where\u2019s the animation? Honestly – still in its early stages. Normally, a project like this would involve multiple people working in parallel. That way, while the 3D artist is modeling the scene, the animator can already start working on the animation on simplified models, because he doesn’t need detailed ones. That alone would cut the work time in half (!). But since I was the only one working on the whole thing, I had a new, another big task in the form of animation. “Well, now it\u2019s finally all downhill from here”, I thought. “Hehe, the fool hasn’t learned anything”, fate probably thought. I think it did. I don\u2019t know – I didn\u2019t ask.<\/p>\n

The first attempt came together pretty quickly. I wouldn\u2019t say it went well, but at least it went fast. That\u2019s something. I decided to start working on Courtney first. After all, she\u2019s the main character of the entire clip, and the focus is primarily on her. The first shot – when she steps down from the stage. The second – when she\u2026 um\u2026 dances with her back to the camera. Then the third, fourth, and in one go I did the entire first half. Alright, time to share my progress online and get some feedback from people.<\/p>\n

And what were the opinions? “Overall, it\u2019s not bad, but\u2026”\u2014which, in short, means “Dude, it\u2019s actually really bad, but I\u2019m trying to be nice.” And yeah, it really was bad. The first version of the animation was slow, uninteresting, and just plain awful. It hurts a bit when you realize you\u2019ve done a poor job. But pride doesn\u2019t finish projects. What didn\u2019t work had to go in the trash, and I had to start animating all over again from scratch. This time, slightly humbled by the mediocre feedback, I decided to take things more seriously. What did that mean? Well, when working on animation, it\u2019s always a good idea to record some references first. How do you do that? Very simple:<\/p>\n