his name is joel

General Mills - "Cheeriocraft"

I was approached by the team at General Mills, representing General Mills & the Cheerios brand, to create "Cheeriocraft", a world created to be similar to the popular game Minecraft, but instead featuring Cheerios as building blocks and Buzz the Bee as the character avatar. We built an entire procedural island from scratch out of virtual Cheerios, climaxing in the building of a giant Cheerio castle. General Mills was incredibly satisfied with the result!

Results: Creative Director, Technical Director, Animator

A :30s TV/Web spot for Cheeriocraft!

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We built a tool that allowed us to build complex structures and landscapes out of individual Cheerios, giving us great flexibility in our designs

We built a tool that allowed us to build complex structures and landscapes out of individual Cheerios, giving us great flexibility in our designs

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Our rendering pipeline allowed us to play with more advanced lighting features such as volumetric fog, sun rays, and bounce lighting to really bring the Cheeriocraft world to life

Our rendering pipeline allowed us to play with more advanced lighting features such as volumetric fog, sun rays, and bounce lighting to really bring the Cheeriocraft world to life

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The castle structure was built out of modular pieces, allowing us to design the walls and towers out of prebuilt blocks

The castle structure was built out of modular pieces, allowing us to design the walls and towers out of prebuilt blocks

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Our 'test' island, where we tested different rendering and build methods for the larger island, with much shorter rendering times

Our 'test' island, where we tested different rendering and build methods for the larger island, with much shorter rendering times

An early animation test placing Buzz in a test world where he could move around

An early animation test placing Buzz in a test world where he could move around

The iconic Buzz character rendered in a Minecraft style!

The iconic Buzz character rendered in a Minecraft style!

The viewport picture shows the size of the island, with each pixel being a stack of 3 Cheerios. We used Z height data to determine what kind of cheeioro was created, giving us snowy mountain tops, forested jungles, and deserts!

The viewport picture shows the size of the island, with each pixel being a stack of 3 Cheerios. We used Z height data to determine what kind of cheeioro was created, giving us snowy mountain tops, forested jungles, and deserts!

A 360 VR rendering of the island

A 360 VR rendering of the island