Progress report and objectives before i go home for christmas.

To be honest i have forgotten to upload my progress so heres whats happened so far...

-fixed the geometry (better than it was before but still not as good as i could do, but it came to the point that i just had to move on.

- blendshapes

my objectives for the end of the week friday the 16th is to get all the blendshapes finished got about another 2 maybe more for emotions and the A/I sound shape

skin the character

complete storyboard

model "the magic rod" and rig it so i am all ready to start animating

achievable? possibly

Close to Meltdown!

well after the hard time of uving my character making a texture, i realised what i thought was a working rig turned out to be a very broken one, which caused a stress filled panic trying to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it many failed attempts I sent a S.O.S email to lynn went in today and have a very close to finished rig, think i need to sort the twist of the spine and do the feet (although I dont quite understand how to do this yet) =/

Decided whilst I try to work the feet i might aswell improve the mesh (really not happy with what i have as its a mess and I know i could do more just felt rushed to do it.

anyways...

the hands  and head look similar the mesh has alot less polys in it now making them look much neater ... I probably wont get the model to the standard I know I am capable of but as long as I make it better than before I will be happy.

basic texture

textured henry , its very basic and simplistic right now so i will probably go in later and make a more detailed texture

henry uvd

Henry all ready to be textured now, in time for making blend shapes and skinning tomorrow

eyes texture

taught myself how to do more realistic eyes so i put it on to see how it looked...

i think they turned out pretty well actually with a few things i could improve ... although i do think my character would suit less realistic looking eyes it was still worth a shot

* just realised i left my usb stick at uni today, GRRREAT! me and tiredness does not go together*

fool character colour sheet

Colour Test

trying to decide what colour is best for henry so did a couple of colour tests ( a good practice with photoshop) aswell.

here it is, i shall be doing a better one with the full body but this was more to practice how to shade and highlight in photoshop properly. however i do like the leg and hand colour set and the way i colour eyes is getting better i think.

Week #8 day #7

Model update

the modeling is finished maya was being a bit annoying making it very hard to get things done at home but i have finaly managed going to clean up the topology and texture it (i shall post up colour variation sketches of Henry soon)

Also Crit week was this week, my pitch didn't go well as I had a mini breakdown of sorts, and my worries beforehand was made worse when they were confirmed as feedback in the pitch, "you were doing well at the beginning of the semester your work seems to have slowed since" which i agree with 100% and im trying to get myself back into the swing of things, finaly getting this guy done has brought me out of the deep abyss I was in at the beginning of this year. So things are looking up.

storybeats written & visual

These are my first drafts of my storybeats,

Opposite Storybeats

1. Henry walks onto screen happy and minding his own business
2. Something in the grass catches his attention
3. a glowing object stuck in the ground Henry bends over to have a closer look
4. Henry curiously but cautiously pokes the object
5. the object makes a pleasant “ding noise” this makes henry really happy
6. He grabs the object
7. and pulls with all his strength but the object just stretches and refuses to budge
8. henry slips and falls back he gets up rather sad but still adiment that he wants the object
9. he limbers up
10. “ “
11. he grabs the object again this time standing up and with both hands for more grip and leverage
12. He pulls again with all his strength
13. theres a snapping noise as the camera is flicked away
14. as the camera spins you can see someone else has been pulled out from the other end of the object
15. the camera lands on the ground as henry is staring at someone right infront of him
16. close up as they look into each others eyes as they are both identical apart from the slight different colours of their skin/eyes
17. henry says hi to his other self but his opposite responds with by
18. henry is very saddened and walks off dropping his glowing object to the ground and his opposite walks away smiling to himself both showing increasing sadness, happyness.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

model update #2

So yeah although Henry might not be modeled to perfection quite yet we still had to move onto rigging our character this week (week#5)

so yeah here he is all rigged...

I also decided just to see how my topolgy is behaving so far by crudely skinning it in a different maya file so here it is.

As you can see the fingers and legs arnt bending to well neitherr is the arm pit, but atleast i know now that these ares need more topolgy so that they dont lose there shape when I bend them...

model update

Hello,

I have been very bad at updating my blogs lately, thats not to say i havnt been doing anything just been rather forgetful anyways so far Henry is looking like this...

So yeah as you can see hes getting there, however still alot to be done have forgotten how you do eyelids and general layout of the face but i tried my best from tutorials on youtube and from what i could remember.

next up rigging...

model progress

just thought i should give you an update of how my models going...

Week #4 day #1

So heres the beginnings of my model aka Henry.. using the topology research has helped me out alot with modeling however i have run into trouble with the stomach if i cant find a way to solve it i will have to go in and ask the lecturer.

Anyways....

My pitch is tomorrow and for the first time I actually appear to have a fair amount of things to show for this year of which i think is of a good standard this early on, just hoping the 4th year agrees. Have the remainder of the week off so hopefully I will have the model finished (excusing a few geometry errors that can be fixed later on) ready for rigging next monday.

topology research #2

Well here are my topology sketches for Henry  just as a reference when modelling him which will begin soon. I had a chat with Lynn earlier this week and she approved my drawing to model so theres nothing holding me back. Looking forward to this havnt modeled a character to animate in a while now.

Back Story

hello, I decided to make a more in depth back story to help me explain henry more to myself and more importantly anyone who watches the short. So here it is...

Back story

Henry is a young human race called Sapasapians who live on a planet called Sapa. Sapasapians are a highly intelligant race that can live naturaly far longer than us because of this there brains take longer to develop, at the age of 13 henry has more in common with our 3-5 year olds than a human teenager.

Henry, is a happy playful Sapman toddler who is very friendly towards everyone and everything he meets apart from broccoli he despises that stuff.

In his spare time he enjoys collecting items that he finds lying about, mainly shiny or glowing items which he keeps in a small box he carries on his person. However he has been taught that some items should be left untouched he feels the rule doesnt imply to himself especialy if the item is shiny glowy or generally pleasant looking.

more research photos

more movies and books that have an interesting take on clones/other dimensions that i felt helped.

although most of them have a more consequences due to paradox's rather than a basic light hearted approach although I suspect thats due to mine is only 30 seconds long instead of the 2hours or 500+ pages of movie/book.

Alternative characters and more sketches

week#3 day#3

I havn't made a post in a while been busy with other modules but thought i should update what I have done for this week.

Alternative Characters

here you can see the various different drawings for who to play in Opposite i do like them all some of them I may keep for a separate project however they all helped in understanding my final drawing.

my character as he is now, i feel the more i draw him the more it will help when it comes to modelling (which will begin this week) i decided to practice drawing his hands aswell as i feel they are my main weakness when it comes to drawing. practice makes perfect.

Before i gooooooo

just another sketch of henry for you.

Opposite Character Profile

Name: Henry

Age: 13

Personality: Quiet Caring Imaginative and very Curious

Back Story: Henry comes from a planet far away from our own and his species of mankind have an expected life of 560 years making the similarity of age to us like what we are to dogs, because of this at the age of 13 he has more in common with our toddlers than a human 13 year old.

Likes: games, sweets, cars, toys, colourful and sparkly things.

Dislikes: school, vegetables, aggression

thats it for today al hopefully be starting modelling this week so expect to see that being uploaded within the week, along with more sketches and hopefully this clay model too also be uploading more research photos aswell.

Topology research

For my research i studied and looked at a rig on www.creativecrash.com called andy, this rig worked well and looked clean and tidy.

I looked over this model alot so that I could plan out how to model my character and i hope this will help :D.

next: i shall be posting a character profile and some more research pictures that helped in creating "Opposite" i am also hoping to buy some modelling clay to model my character soon and shall post up pics of that if all goes well.

Research guide

Just thought it would help if I put down what the picture is from and what animation it contributed in research towards

1. UP! - Russel a little boy who wants to have an adventure helped in designing my little boy for VS. Monster

2 - 3. Toy story - Andy and the imaginative scene helped also in coming up with the idea of VS. Monster

4. The lost thing - About a man finding a thing on the beach that doesnt fit in anywhere else gave me an idea of what the unknown object could be it also helped a little for VS. Monster and Opposite

5. Stewie - In this family guy episode stewie clones himself to carry out the mundane tasks that he doesnt want to do, this helped in creating Opposite

6. BBC news - This is an article discussing the likelyhood of a parallel universe that could be no more than 2 millimetres away from our own. Which helped in the story creation of Opposite to help explain it to peers and the lecturer.

7. monster drawing - helped in character design for Vs Monster and my monster attack concept idea.*

8. Imaginationland - South Park Episode about them meeting things from their imagination helped in how to merge the boys imagination to real life for Vs Monster

9. Dr.Who - Dr who meets a clone of himself this helped in Opposite

10. the simpsons - Opposite

11. boys imagination drawing - Vs Monster

12. AnglerFish - helped in making the flower and monster attack idea*

13. My Neighbour Totoro - Vs Monster

14. Futurama - Professor Farnsworth creates a parallel universe into a box this episode helped significantly for the creation of Opposite.

15. The Switch Animation - helped for the box concept idea*

* although not helping in the design/story of the final idea directly the research into them and the ideas themselves led to the creation of opposite and Vs Monster

Some research pictures for you...

I said I would be making a post about topology research 2 days ago but i have been busy with my other modules so it had to sit on the backburner but what i have done is got some research pics to upload that i forgot to upload earlier these are both for my final ideas and the ones that didnt quite cut it:

"time and strange forms of exotic matter. some of them may even contain you, in a slightly different form."

Right thats them for just now i will probably keep adding to it especially for the Opposite idea.

Topology Research will be up soon i promise!