Animate!

Now that we are in the final stretch of Going Live its probably time to talk about my final project again.

Here is my character for my final animation. (The suit won't be grey in the final film that was just to help me work out the sections.)

I'm still thumbnailing the exact story (and we have another storytelling class that will hopefully help me completely lock it down) so in the meantime I have been getting on with my character.

This week we have been getting on with modelling the assets for Going Live. I was in charge of making the model sheet for the Sylvanian family rabbit and with modelling the robot.



The next stage is going to be rigging and pre vis which I am very excited about.

So its finally done! I don't know what went wrong with the render but I was changing settings for (no joke) about 5 hours and I could not get it to work properly.



And here is a comparison of the final character with my drawing.

 I think I need a lot more practice at painting weights as I'm never quite sure if I'm doing it right.



UPDATE: I have broken my rig, not sure how, But the model is already posed so I will finish everything else first and go back and fix it if I have time.

So first things first I restarted the head. I really wasn't happy with how the first attempt was progressing. Unfortunately with the second attempt I kept forgetting to screenshot so I only have a few progress shots.

So I have started trying to model my character in 3D. I think its going ok so far but it might just be too early to tell. I have been using some digital tutors tutorials as well the the class tutorials to help me with the modelling.






I'm not very happy with the head at this stage, I'm thinking about restarting it but I will keep working on it and seeing if I can improve it for a little longer.

Here is the model sheet I will be using to translate my character into 3D. I have redrawn a few bits to make sure that the body is symmetrical so hopefully this will work for modelling. 

Next I need to finish up my model sheet and get started on my storyboard and my character model.

So after doing all my outfit options I started to narrow down the bits I liked from all of them to try and pick a final look.

I now have the basic outfit I want (it has a hood and its not to drapey I hope) and an idea of what accessories I want her to have. Now I'm working on a new turn around. Here is a Work In Progress version of my turnaround. I haven't decided on a colour scheme yet, I'm still playing about with it, and I also haven't drawn the accessories yet.

I should hopefully finish this up on Wednesday, unless the feedback I get means I have to make more major changes, then I can do some expression sheets and my model sheet for Maya.

So I got most of the way through making a character turn around before I realised that I had basically given my character a lot of clothes and hair which would be very difficult to model. Showing my character to Phil he agreed so I'm going back to try and redesign what she is wearing and maybe put a hat on her or shave her head, haven't decided yet.
This is some of my brainstorming for her new outfit. While doing this I have discovered I really like drapey jackets that will be incredibly hard to model. Despite knowing this I seem to have drawn 3 of them. I'm going to do a sort of second draft with all of my favourite bits and simplify it down a bit and add some accessories.