MO MarTech A rigged 3D brand character and a forty-second animated explainer

MOM is MO MarTech’s mascot, an elephant who teaches marketing. Gibbon built her as a rigged 3D character, then wrote, staged and rendered the film she stars in.

ZBrush, Blender, After Effects

MOM, a light grey elephant with purple braids and purple glasses, in a purple cardigan, yellow shirt and brown trousers, waving

The Breakdown

Sculpt, mesh, paint, rig, stage, render: the pipeline laid over the finished film.

Opening frame of the breakdown: MOM beside a young woman in a pink shirt in a wood-panelled office, with the title MOM Animation Breakdown, Gibbon Studio

The Situation

Moni Oloyede runs MO MarTech, a consultancy that teaches small businesses marketing fundamentals. Her brand has a face: MOM, an elephant in a cardigan and glasses, a teacher by design.

MOM existed only as AI-generated images that shifted from one picture to the next. Moni wanted one consistent character she could pose, animate and reuse for years.

One of the AI-generated images of MOM that the brand started with: an elephant with purple braids and glasses in a purple cardigan, a whistle on a lanyard, pointing at a screen

Where she started: one of the AI images

MOM standing, facing forward, smiling, as the finished 3D character

MOM, built in 3D

From Sculpt to Mesh

The ZBrush sculpt of MOM rendered as plain grey clay, three-quarter view

ZBrush sculpt

The retopologised MOM mesh shown as a clean wireframe

Retopologised mesh

Carson sculpted MOM in ZBrush. The sculpt was then cleaned up, split into separate parts and retopologised into a light, animation-ready mesh with clean UVs.

Paint, Hair and a Rig

MOM fully textured: light grey skin, purple braids, purple glasses, purple cardigan over a yellow shirt, brown trousers and loafers

Painted textures and card hair

The clay model of MOM mid-wave with the control rig drawn over it

Control rig

Textures were painted by hand and the hair was built from cards. The colours follow the brand: light gray skin, purple cardigan, yellow shirt, brown trousers. A Rigify rig with extra controls for the hair, glasses and pupils lets MOM be posed and animated however the brand needs.

Poses

MOM with one hand on her hip and a finger raised, as if she has just had an idea MOM smiling and gesturing to one side with an open hand, as if teaching MOM with both arms open in a welcoming stance

MOM was delivered with her rig and a first set of poses: a bright idea, a teaching point and an open-armed welcome. Shape keys handle the fine adjustments, so the same rig can strike any pose the brand needs.

The Film

A frame from the finished film: MOM leans in beside a young woman in a pink shirt who is looking at her phone in surprise, in a wood-panelled home office

Next came a forty-second explainer for the MO MarTech homepage. A business owner is doing everything she was told and getting no leads. MOM steps in as the mentor and shows her what to fix. The second character and the office are licensed stock, relit and reworked to sit beside MOM.

Blockouts Instead of Storyboards

The same shot twice: on the left the rough blockout with a placeholder character, on the right the final frame with wood panelling and the finished protagonist

Instead of storyboards, the film was blocked out in 3D with rough poses and a choice of camera moves, so pacing and framing were settled before any lighting or polish.

One Frame, Four Ways

One frame of the film as a wireframe: MOM and the protagonist drawn in dense mesh lines

Wireframe

The same frame as untextured grey clay

Clay

The same frame with textures but no lighting

Textures, unlit

The same frame of the finished film: MOM turns toward the protagonist, warm light on wood panelling

Final render

The same frame of the finished film as wireframe, clay, flat textures and the final Eevee render. Facial performance was polished first, because that is where a viewer looks.

The Second Character

The protagonist in an early draft: short hair and a yellow shirt

Draft

The protagonist in the final film, same shot: hair tied up and a red shirt

Final

The protagonist started as a stock rig. Her hair was rebuilt with new cards and her shirt moved from yellow to red, so she reads clearly and no longer shares a colour with MOM.

Icons on a Phone Screen

The finished icons: a purple envelope with an orange megaphone, a bell and a speech bubble, above a glowing orange path
The phone-screen icons as wireframes

Wireframe

The phone-screen icons as grey clay

Clay

When MOM shows her the fix, the phone screen carries its own graphics. The icons were modelled and lit in Blender, then tracked onto the phone in After Effects.

Delivered

The YouTube thumbnail: GET MORE LEADS BY DOING LESS WORK in two purples on off-white, MOM waving at left, marketing icon tiles at right

The YouTube thumbnail

Sixteen frames from the film in a four by four grid, from the protagonist at her desk through MOM's entrance and the phone-screen moment to the closing high five

Sixteen frames from the film

The film runs just under forty seconds. It shipped with an animated opening frame, a YouTube thumbnail, the Blender project and the character files, so MO MarTech owns everything needed to keep using her.

Moni Oloyede

“Talented, professional, and just a pleasure to work with.”

“I cannot recommend Carson enough. He created a 3D model of my MOM mascot and then brought her to life in a 40-second 3D animated video, and he did an incredible job.

What stood out most was how easy he was to work with throughout the entire process. He was communicative, responsive, flexible, and genuinely collaborative. I gave him plenty of notes and feedback along the way, and he took everything in stride, made the edits, and turned revisions around quickly.

He also went above and beyond what I asked for. He brought his own ideas to the project, found solutions when we ran into challenges, and was incredibly thoughtful and resourceful about getting the final product right.

If you’re looking for someone who can take your brand or creative vision and elevate it through 3D design and animation, Carson is absolutely someone I would recommend.”

Moni Oloyede, founder, MO MarTech

MOM waving

One character, rigged and approved. One forty-second film.

Character: design, ZBrush sculpt, art direction of retopology, texturing and rigging. Film: story, staging, lighting, rendering, motion graphics and edit. Blender, ZBrush, After Effects, Premiere Pro.

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