The idea behind the coloring book hasn’t changed all that much since the McLoughlin Brothers delivered the first Little Folks’ Painting Book in the 1880s. Providing a way for children to experience the arts spans across the ages and the medium, from sheets of paper to digital model. Figuromo is delivering the new coloring book with a network of apps for children and adults alike to explore color and texture. They’re usinfor artist to use to have their own character coloring app. Founder Clarine Landes tells us more about the idea behind Figuromo and how they use KeyShot for the app visuals.

Figuromo

Modeling software used: Autodesk Maya / Pixologic ZBrush
Website: figuromo.com – Apps on iTunes

“With Figuromo, we wanted to create a whole new genre of coloring apps for kids. We’re fans of miniature painting and wanted to bring this kind of experience to the mobile app market. Visual quality was on the top of our priority list. We wanted Figuromo sculptures to look real, and we wanted kids to not only pick the color and texture of the figurines, but also what material they were made of! We wanted to deliver complex materials like glass and brushed metal, wax, wood and materials with subsurface scattering. And it definitely had to be 3D.”

The first apps series from Figuromo with views and appearance developed in KeyShot

“After trying multiple real-time rendered and pre-rendered engines/solutions, we decided to take the important decision of making zero compromises on the final frame and going with pre-rendered images layered and colored in real-time through our engine. For over a year, we worked on prototypes; dialing in our code and defining the maximum image resolution and layering techniques. As the 3D artwork was being produced, we produced low fidelity renders from various 3D packages and integrated these images into our app framework to dial in our coding… Then came the fun part.”

“We started using KeyShot to produce the final renders of our figurines. The ease with which we were able to assign various materials and set up turntable renders was key to us being able to quickly produce all the final game images. We didn’t have to spend time tweaking shaders and setting up textures. In KeyShot, things just worked out-of-the-box and the resulting imagery was exactly what our apps needed to stand out in the crowded mobile app market.”

“For this initial release, it was important that we prove to ourselves that we could develop a reproducible rendering recipe for all future Figuromo Apps.
This is easily achieved with KeyShot: we were able to set up a template scene that will work for all our render needs: easy turntable camera setup, drag-and-drop background and lighting, hassle-free object importing, and dragging various materials onto the artwork needed for our engine’s layering/coloring technique. The renders are fast, image results are sharp and realistic, and the multiple image output formats integrate perfectly in our code base.”

Some of the Figuromo Artist Series from their app network, available on iTunes, Google Play and Amazon. How to join.

“Thanks to KeyShot, the final artwork was rendered and integrated into the final apps way ahead of schedule and we feel confident we can achieve our goals with our production pipeline. We plan on carefully curating our 3D artwork selection and releasing a new figurine every 3-4 weeks. We’ll be showcasing the art and artists behind their work, and will build up a large serialized collection we think kids and adults will enjoy making their own.”