Animated Short - Shader Development

Focused on creating a shader for the rubber thumb. The SSS has a very small radius since the characters are very small, and rubber thumbs are small to begin with (characters are around 13 cm in height - in proportion to real sized toy characters - the entire film is scaled according to the flower and telescope and could potentially exist in real life). The image with the orange rubber thumb is a real photograph and to the right is the progress I took to create the shader. I started from the root of the object after adding a base diffuse color and focused on what made up it's center, which is a rubbery, thin material that has SSS, just like skin. Then I added a rough reflection as it appeared to be in the reference image. I went back to tweak the SSS to get a large value just like in the reference, below the white reflection.

I also spent some time experimenting with different colour schemes for Vladimir. I think I prefer the green as it makes him feel less... Blue. ;)