Boutique23 Character Rigs

Hello friends! Today we are very excited to announce a partnership with Boutique23, a club where 3D animators, professionals, students and more can find finished and ready-to-animate characters alongside other resources to help bring your animations to life. These new rigs are high quality, studio made so that it knows no limits. Our partnership with Boutique23 has already been a joy and we hope that it continues to be a long and fruitful one.

We’ve seen so much incredible work done with our Tribe and we want to see more! At Animation Mentor, our students and alumni receive unlimited possibilities and we’re excited to see you all work with these new, kick ass rigs. So without further ado, we’d like to welcome TRE3, TOO, and FIFT to our Tribe!

Happy animating 🙂

– The Animation Mentor Crew

On top of being dedicated to bringing original new characters to our students at Animation Mentor each term, we are constantly looking for ways to put our students ahead of the rest. With that, we are incredibly honored to announce our partnership with Boutique23, creators of top quality animation characters for the CG community.

We’re excited about this partnership as it allows us to shine a light on the incredible work Boutique23 is already doing while exposing our community to a taste of what they offer. We are very excited to see how this partnership grows. Starting immediately, we are offering TRE3, TOO and FIFT to students in our character animation program as well as alumni. Take a sneak peek at each of their amazing body controls right here:

We were able to talk with Sergio Jiménez, CEO and Co-Owner of Boutique23 to hear more about his background and passion for bringing great characters to the CG community. There’s a lot to look forward to with Boutique23! Here’s what he had to say:

BOBBY: Tell us a little about your background in CG

SERGIO: I come from a telecommunications engineering background, but I started discovering the world of animation and VFX back in 2004 after finishing university and it has always seemed magical to me. I started my own animation studio back in 2007 here in Barcelona; 23lunes Animation Studio. We did different commercial work as well as participating in animated feature films. We achieved a very good standard of quality over the years and ended up working for some international productions, like Justin and the Knights of Valour and Ender’s Game, where we worked directly for Digital Domain producing the whole sequence of The Mind Game within the movie. Even though what caught my attention about animation was the combination of arts and science behind it, I’ve always been on the business and production side of things, trying to find the best way to grow in the Animation and VFX industry.

BOBBY: Why did you start Boutique23?

SERGIO: In terms of 3D character animation, as we all know, it takes quite a lot of people, effort, talent and money to develop a nice character ready for an animator to have fun with. That might explain why it used to be so difficult for an animator to get characters outside of the work environment, and why most animators were using almost the same characters for their reels, exercises, shorts, etc. For students it was even harder because they were even further removed from companies or studios where they could get such characters. In addition to this, companies and professionals developing characters don’t share their results or their technology with anyone; mainly because they produce for a client who owns the property, but also because they invest quite a lot of money developing their tools and technology, and that needs to remain private.

Boutique23 was an idea trying to solve this problem. We thought: why don’t we produce nice, original, beautiful and technically advanced characters for animators? If animators have great characters available they will be able to develop that story which they couldn’t do otherwise. If animators have quality characters to work with, they’ll be able to focus solely on what they love, without having to worry about how difficult and expensive it is to get a technically advanced 3D character. Students will have better tools to train with, and they will get better faster. They will get used to professional tools they’d find in a professional studio, which also means that animation studios will have access to better professionals.

It seemed to me that everyone wins. Boutique23 tries to be a cog within a “Virtuous Circle” that allows both animation professionals and the industry to benefit.

BOBBY: What is your vision for Boutique23?

SERGIO: Today boutique23 is a place where you can find great 3D characters at an awesome price. What we envision for tomorrow is boutique23 as a marketplace where animators will find not only 3D characters, but also props, backgrounds, sets, lighting tools, animation tools, etc. An animator will be able to come to boutique23 and get what they need to tell their stories, as if it was pieces of a puzzle they want to animate, put together and give life to.

BOBBY: What does the partnership with Animation Mentor mean to Boutique23?

SERGIO: Animation Mentor was very pioneering by envisioning that making knowledge and resources more accessible to the public brings positive benefits for the industry and for individuals. Boutique23 having a partnership with Animation Mentor is an acknowledgement of this idea of the “Virtuous Circle”. We couldn’t be happier about it. And of course, it also means more animators enjoying our characters, which will allow us to develop and improve.

BOBBY: What do we have to look forward to from Boutique23?

SERGIO: We are working on a “contributors” system, where designers, modelers, riggers, etc. will be able to develop assets and sell them in boutique23, under a high-quality standard of design and technology. We know there are many artists out there developing amazing work, and it would be great for other professionals to be able to use that to tell their own stories. Boutique23 also wants to give a helping hand to those who create awesome work but which then ends up only being used in a still image or on a personal reel. Why can’t we see those amazing characters moving in an awesome short film?

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Try taking these new characters out for a spin today!
Check out Animation Mentor’s Character Animation Program and tell your story with one of our new Tribe members.