Hypo Group Alpe Adria is an international financial group with over 370 banking and leasing business units in 12 countries (Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgarian, Macedonia and Ukraine).
Many financial institutes have created mascots, because they are perfect tool for easier approach to their potential clients. Therefore, many times these mascots transcend their purpose and can wind up being the spokesperson for the entire organization, making appearances in nearly every single ad and marketing piece.
Our client has expressed a desire to transform their mascot, a hippopotamus, in 3d graphics and that it should reflects a fairly standard range of personality attributes – friendliness, strength, wisdom, etc. For that reason, we had to include in 3d character all relevant details as: moving muzzle, because the client wanted that their hippopotamus would talk, moving eyes, which will make character friendly and above all the character figure should reflect the power and strength. So, incredible amount of work was waiting for us.
A wireframe preview of Hypo Alpe Adria hippopotamus character rigged with morph targets in 3ds max. The model was designed, posed and textured with Zbrush.
Base model was design using ZBrush software, then moved to 3ds Max for rigging and animating. Rendering was done with MentalRay. Hair and Fur was added with separated pass.
