3D & social
the brief was a mascot. what it became was a media property: a fully rigged 3D character composited into live action, posting daily, and at one point among the fastest growing accounts in France. it now carries 4.2M followers under its own name rather than the artist’s.
the work, as it ran
a unicorn in a tracksuit and ski goggles. no gender, no nationality, and no language it cannot speak. that was the argument in the original pitch and it held: a character with nothing to translate travels further than a person does, and it can walk into any market without being redrawn.
concept and silhouette first, then the sculpt, then texture and lighting until the surface reads as something you could pick up. the horn, the goggles and the mane carry the whole identity, so they were built to stay readable at the size a phone actually shows them, which is roughly a thumbnail.
a skeleton, controllers and weight painting turn a sculpture into a puppet. this is the part that decides whether a character has a career or a photoshoot. built properly it can act, take direction, and be handed to another animator without being rebuilt. that rig is why the account could post at volume for years rather than run out of poses.
the character does not sit on a coloured backdrop. it is tracked and composited into real footage: passenger seats, car parks, shop floors, crowds, alongside real people. that is a per shot camera track, a light match and a shadow pass, which is the difference between a sticker on a video and something that looks like it was there.
a wardrobe that changes with the trend, a library of loops and reactions, and a posting rhythm fast enough to land on a format while it is still moving. the character does what the artist will not, which was the point from the first slide. the account passed four million followers and a single post reached 12.8M views.
more from the account
