The Game Grumps are a YouTube Let's Play channel, focused around game commentary and improv comedy. They are comprised by a number of hosts, several of which are connected to the art world. Their main show is hosted by Arin Hanson and Dan Avidan, and over the years they have established a close connection with the community and encouraged their fans to create any type of art, directly related to the show or not. With this, I set myself to recreate the hosts in 3D in order to polish my 3D and rigging skills.

The characters' creation process began with the development of concept art in Adobe Photoshop, followed by the modelling phase in Autodesk Maya. The 3D models are optimized to be used in both 3D animations and game engines, such as Unity.

Several rigging techniques were implemented, such as:

• Inverse Kinematics for the legs and arms;
• Reverse Foot rigs;
• Automated foot rolls;
• Twist systems for the forearms, legs and spine;
• Volume preservation in the knees, buttocks and elbows;
• Stretch and squash system for the spine;
• Joint/spline-based facial rigging.

These characters were made with the intention of being shared openly and used by the community.

Download the Grumps! This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.