Living Outside the Cube

Rubik is a cartoon character from an American Saturday morning tradition which is all but gone. Placing him in a live-action movie world, while still maintianing his cartoon roots, will of course take some very new, very NOT-traditional methods. I feel that in order to be a cartoon, Rubik should still look like a cartoon, however he should also be surfaced and lit - via 3d animation technology - to blend seamlessly with his surroundings. I picture a vast improvement and elaboration on the very old technique of blending live-action and cartoon animation. The way visual effects artists can now achieve interaction between people and animation has the potential to be a lot of fun if the animated character is also allowed to look, act, and react like a cartoon.

No two artists see or draw anything quite the same, and I've got some pretty specific ideas about Rubik. He's the heart of the story in Rubik's Moive. He should stand out. He should be immediately relatable and endearing. Most of my drawings of him come straight from the story, as Rubik appears to me in my imagination. In my renderings Rubik looks a little different - larger eyes rounder face, altered size proportion between him and his cube - but nothing drastically changed really. Any changes I've made are mostly unconscious and related to elaborations on Rubik's personality and how those details would manifest visually. I've also done a 3D model of Rubik based on my drawings. Check out 3D Rubik!

When Rubik is unsolved or "hiding" he looks like an ordianry Rubik's Cube. Quite often in the story, Rubik must transform from an ordinary cube to an animated cartoon cube with little cartoon cube feet, elfin features, and blue skin. This will be the tricky bit. I imagine lots of light and swirly glowing mist as the edges of Rubik's colored squares push together to reduce the black beveling to a thin cartoon line. The squares - which are niether stickers nor tiles, but some sort of enamel stuff, retain their shiny appearance as all the glowing swirly mist resolves to form Rubik's features. Then Rubik's eyes open, he lands on his little blue feet, and voila! Rubik's Cube lives!

Since Rubik is able to defy gravity, his feet only pop out as needed or just whenever he feels like having feet. They phase right through his bottom cube face, extended or retracted just like landing gear. In the air Rubik is extremely agile, and can be anything from wieghtless as a pixie to high-speed projectile. On his feet, however Rubik has a clumsiness which lends greatly to his cartoon potential. Let's just say he loses his balance pretty easily.

Among the images on this site are a number of my own simulations and examples of how Rubik might appear in a "real" world. I currently lack the technological capabilities which I know exist to fully express what I imagine. But I'm getting there slowly. And I have great faith in the abilities of animators to give Rubik a lot of life, heart, and reality as he interacts with his human friends onscreen.