About
Vincent de Vries, one of the two developers of Krunker.io, reached out to me to commission artwork. I informed him that I also specialized in animation and offered my services at a reduced rate. Being able to contribute to the community while earning through creative work was already a highly rewarding experience for me. After reviewing an animation I had previously created for a montage, he approved my work and assigned me to produce the Stylized Bundle Trailer. This collaboration later led to the World Cup Bundle Trailer. In preparation for the 2022 World Cup, I spent over five weeks designing and building custom environments in Blender to bring this project to life. I also worked with Master Sims and a Voice actor from Fiverr for this specific animation.
Concept & Inspiration
Influenced by the cinematic language of Nike and Adidas advertisements, this piece explores a progression from isolation to performance. The character trains alone in a controlled environment, fails a bicycle kick, and later re-enacts the moment in a stadium setting, where the action culminates in a successful goal.
Character Rigging & Cloth Deformation Workflow
When working with the Krunker character rigs, the chest body skins and jerseys could initially only be parented to the main body mesh. However, any transformations applied to the rig caused the jersey to remain static and appear flat, breaking the illusion of realistic movement. To resolve this, we bound the jersey mesh directly to the armature using proper skinning and weight painting, allowing the clothing to deform and stretch naturally with the character’s motion. This required an extensive trial-and-error process, but the final solution was successfully implemented in Blender.
Community Engagement & Hype
The hype surrounding this animation was significant within the community. After posting a teaser image on Twitter, where I was already recognized as an official animator for the game, the post sparked widespread speculation from high-profile content creators, including easter egg analysis and theory-driven content. I saw these cinematics as an opportunity to build narrative lore and re-engage the community, which is why one teaser featured the name “Derby” hidden as a sticker on the soccer ball launcher — an asset I personally modeled.
Environment Design
To accommodate the high density of crowd characters, we employed 2D crowd assets as a performance optimization strategy, allowing the scene to retain realistic lighting, camera parallax, and visual depth without compromising render quality.
Krunker.io World Cup Bundle - Now available with Season 6
Was released on Krunker's official Youtube Channel (66.4k subscribers) and Twitter (25.5K Followers)
15,000+
views
1000+
likes
1M3s
Duration of Short-Film
25+
Scenes Rendered
