Posting this here today for National Hot Dog Day, the third Wednesday in July every year.
I started out creating just a model to use for my students in a class lesson, but felt like it could make a fun little sequential loop. The was a fun opportunity to show the story of a hot dog from start to finish. I like making short digestible loops that can showcase animation and design principles rather easily.
I found ways to incorporate anticipation, follow through, squash and stretch, ease in/out throughout the animation as examples to show my students. It help when you can show them directly in a project what the curves look like, or quickly change or toggle the animation to remove these features, where you are left with less desirable results.
I used two newer features in Cinema 4D in this one. They updated their Symmetry object to allow you to do multiplane symmetry, so for the bun I only modeled 25% of it and flipped it twice across different planes within the same object, that was a welcome upgrade. Also Pyro certainly seems a little more intuitive and reliable since the last version, that helped create a subtle flame within the grill and the puff of smoke that flashes when the lid lifts up.
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/adee604022ec97aacb775644d283a726/f0c89540-1654-4eb3-9ebc-b0794f88a53c_rw_1200.jpg?h=55e5cc0006a6cd6c8370107c5daf64d0)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/adee604022ec97aacb775644d283a726/0b9ba225-a76a-43c4-a60c-bae5feaa6173_rw_1200.jpg?h=b1264777e29a51d842bdcd76cf938fea)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/adee604022ec97aacb775644d283a726/e621fcc0-8129-44d5-a14f-7d0b64ef58c4_rw_1200.jpg?h=7a330544968a9c14e0594f72e7c8cb38)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/adee604022ec97aacb775644d283a726/47096201-c6e4-4c18-86be-b9b547f214df_rw_1200.jpg?h=ca0c5e17b1d5256f48368eca4ff9a90f)
![](https://cdn.myportfolio.com/adee604022ec97aacb775644d283a726/ee42063d-aea7-4073-a985-2a99682835bb_rw_1200.jpg?h=757cc23ee5223e4cae25266f383fcc45)
I also wanted to make some that leaned into having sound design, that was a fun road to go down. I used the following sounds from freesound.org in the mix:
Plus this audio track:
I recorded my own voice that went "Mmmmmmm" but admittingly did not do my own burp at the very end.
Also just to make it more challenging I wanted one render that could work across HD, square, and vertical formatting.
Happy National Hot Dog Day!