Marshall The Alien

A cranky little alien — and yet, somehow cute.

The challenge with Marshall was to create a cute, friendly-looking alien character, yet not sacrifice his attitude. We used rounded forms during the modeling stage, creating a plush, toy-like shape. In animation, we used overplayed frown faces to capture a “grumpy little boy” attitude — making him both expressive and lovable.

Marshall also employs real-time animated normals, a method that changes the surface texture of the mesh according to input from the face tracker. For instance, extra wrinkle details are visible on the brows as he is frowning, adding realism and emotion at no increase in mesh complexity.

Character created for Animaze, based on a concept by former colleague Elena Barbu.