In 2020-2021 I worked as a 3D modeler on the Sesame Workshop series, "Mecha Builders" for Guru Studio. This was a pretty exciting project to be a part of, I mean Sesame Street... but they are robots?! That's pretty cool. Obviously growing up with Sesame Street and finally getting on to a project with robots, I was very excited. And the comedy of this show is just perfect. It was great too because I got to work with a bunch of the same team I had worked with on True and the Rainbow Kingdom years before. This was also a very different experience for everybody since this was the first whole production done remotely due to the pandemic.
My duties on this show were mostly modeling Vehicles and Sets.
VEHICLES
TRUCK
3D MODELING
Definitely my favorite contribution to the whole show was modeling the old fashioned pickup truck. The truck served as the base for all of the other trucks in the show. I also modified it into the Ranger Truck, The Broken Truck, and the Food trucks. The awesome Pretzel and Cookie on the Food Trucks were borrowed from other assets, I’m not certain who modeled those. I believe the Tow-Winch, Bubblegum, and Telescope mods were done by Manny Lopez. Trucks textured by Victor Pollock.
CRANE
3D MODELING
Tower crane for the construction site. Made for a really humorous episode with the magnet.
SPACE STATION
3D MODELING
I also got to model the Space Station and Space Station Interior. Here it's docked to Zee's Rocket, modeled by Darren Marek.
SETS
PETTY BIG CITY LIBRARY
3D MODELING
The city definitely has a Hill Valley vibe. I didn't do much on this set, but I got to build the library, which is sort of the Hill Valley Courthouse Mall and Clocktower of the show. It even used to have a clock on it, and then in a later episode I think someone else did modify it to have a clock again.
SUNNY SIDE FARM
3D MODELING
I got to build a lot of the parts for the farm. Definitely something that would change hands a bunch and lots of people contributing. For this set I modeled the Barn, Farmhouse, Shed, Silo, Old Fashioned Windmill, Fences, Corn. At some point every modeler will have to build a barn. You can't escape it.
BIG BOULDER MUSEUM
3D MODELING
Another collaborative set, I modeled the cabin, did a bunch of landscaping work to the roads and parking lot, and also some set dressing. I also modeled the interior of the cabin repurposing the exterior. All of the walls were built to expand and hide according to the camera needs. The interior was dressed with a combination of new and existing props. Can't remember who made the nice picture frames and some of the other props in here, but some good teamwork making this.
RANGER TOWER
3D MODELING
I modeled the Ranger tower and built the set. Thankfully Darren Marek had built these great cliff walls which everyone repurposed in all the Tree Top Woods sets, which made everything super easy. A lot of these sets didn't have actual designs, but 3D proxies, which were quite a bit more realistic of a style. So the set modelers got to do a lot of design improvising to make everything feel like it fit in the Muppet World.
BRIDGE
3D MODELING
I did the modeling for the bridge and built surrounding area, again from Darren's cliff assets, and dressed it with all the usual existing trees and such. I also modeled the replacement bridge after the Yip Yips accidentally destroy the good bridge. Every modeler will also probably make a bridge at some point too.
LAURENCE PINECONE SCULPTURE
3D MODELING
My one "almost-character" model for this show is the Laurence Pinecone Statue. There was a really great gag where they accidentally carve him into ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, but it was mostly cut.
