Brief

Funny Or Die collaborated with super trainer Jillian Michaels of Biggest Loser fame to see how tampon commercials would look like if they had a masculine twist to them. This sketch required a bit of branding for the fictional product, some animation for a tampon fight scene, and some motion work to sell the product’s details.

Process

The tampon busting through the wall during the hero shot was done by pre-baking the collision data in Cinema4D from the brick wall and the tampon. In order to get the weight of the chain on the tampon right, the motion of the tampon swinging was first baked before doing the collision which allowed it to get a consistent swing each time we ran the objects in simulation. As we approached the tampon fighting section, I noticed the physics simulation was bogging down my machine and also resulted in the chain breaking whenever the tampon made sudden moves to strike. The solution to the issue was to create the chain through joints instead of linking them as collider objects which sped up the process tremendously and resulted in an intact chain link no matter how fast the object moved.

Outcome

Looking back at the above paragraph, it seems hilarious to describe my trial and error process of animating a tampon with a titanium chain linked to it in such serious manner. I’d never thought I’d be making something like this, but glad I got to hop onto the project as much was learned from working with Cinema4D’s physics engine and joint system to achieve the goal of our animations.