Club Penguin Dance

Animated Loop

About this project

I animated this for the forth round of the Newgrounds Summer animation Jams in 2021. I animated the penguin from Club Penguin performing his iconic dance to the tune of the Never-Ending Dance Party Collab.

Process

The concept behind this collab was really cool, but my idea was admittedly lazy. The goal was to create a video of different entries stitched together to create a fun sort of animated dance party. Everyone was to animated characters dancing to the same music that was provided. I couldn't think of anything that orginal, but I thought it would be really fun to throw the club penguin into the mix. This one was super simple and I'm pretty happy with it.

I wanted to emulate the style of Club Penguin as close as I could in a 3d space. First came the penguin model, which was fun to make. It's mostly inspired by the penguin designs I saw the most growing up.

I was going for a toon shaded look, but I also didn't want to do outlines as those tend to get messy unless I spend more time to adjust them. The animation was going to be based on the dance animation from the game itself, so it was really easy to plan this one out.

The whole project is contained in one blend file. Even the music is included to help me time the animtion. The background is cool to look at from a different angle.

Theres not much else for me to talk about for this one, so this next paragraph is some specific details about stuff only some people will fully understand. And no pictures sorry.

The animation was done super fast thanks to the simplicity of the character and the dance. Most of the animation is in the torso, which was done super quickly with a spine and fk. Everything else was animated around this main motion. The toon shaders on certain parts like the beak would also look inconsistant when in motion. This is because the distance from the light is changing when in motion. I reduced this unwanted effect by controlling the properties of the shader with a driver. A cubes location was used to change one of the factors of the shader. I animated this cube frame by frame in order to make sure the look of the model remained consistant across the entire animation. Okay done with my random information now.

I've thought about re-animating this to an orginal Club Penguin song or just making the dance more accurate to the original. Probably won't happen, but it would be fun if I did. Overall, very fun project and I'm glad I did it.

Related Links

Places to watch the animated short: