This'll be a quickie cause I don't have much to say really, but I finished the main character! (pretty much) and I have some spare time to have a little blog.
The week has felt kind of slow, and the model still feels kind of unfinished, but i've felt this before and i'm pretty sure it's because it IS unfinished - really. There's still the UVing, Texturing and Rigging before it'll be complete and ready to animate. But the modeling in largely done. There are parts which i'm not sure will work, but the only way we will find out is by starting the rigging. I've been pretty careful and tested things a few times so I really hope there are no major problems, cause there'll definately be some minor ones. I guess let's get on with the pictures!
Front and side of his current state. Put some coloured lambert materials on for fun.
Boots which i'm sorta proud of, so simple but effective. Here i learnt the power of building models with a very strong idea of what they'll be used for. Since i knew the boots where to be wrinkled in such a way, i made the topology according to this and making sexy wrinkles was real easy.
closeup of the face (still with temporary hair cause we don't really know what's happening with this) and i'm showing off the detatchable eyebrows for... some reason. They were originally part of the same object as the face, but I had a chat to georg and he said that it's cool if you can get away with detatched. Hopefully we will.
Remodeled the hands at the request of andy. I was happy with the old ones but I like the new ones too. They look much neater at least, and the thumb is better. Also showing off the cuffs i made, again I'm not sure why really, they're pretty simple...
finally here's a video. This post feels really self-indulgent for some reason lol. I really like vimeo, anyway. Nice and clean and HD and all that jazz.
Still a few things left to do with the model such as making proper hair and maybe a few more tiny details and of course rigging, then it's all up to Andy!
That'll do, weird post but it's sunday and sorta late. See you Friday!
Hoi, back again, busy day today. Finished reading a book that has to be returned tomorrow, have to write up notes for it, do housework, write this blog, do a spider chart... erg, still loads to go. Blog time anyway.
So this week was the week of the presentation and so it consumed practically all of my time. I created a video to present my idea to the panel and everyone and it was quite a time consuming process, but i'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Here's the vid firstly:
Please ignore the horrible writing (I hate writing!), and the cheesiness which was partially intended. It was quite fun getting back into Premiere. Since it's a fairly easy piece of software to get into and it's always fun learning/relearning stuff. Managed to make some fairly quick but nice looking animations for the transitions of the pictures and stuff which I think helps the style of the characters and everything as a whole. The music helps a lot too, if you're wondering it's Helix Nebula by a band called Anamanaguchi. Good tune. Er.. yeah, anyway. Did the pitch, shitting myself for the initial introduction thing which I mumbled my way through nervously, played the vid then answered some questions in a much more relaxed manner for whatever reason.
The criticism that I got back was mainly to do with the depth of the story. I think I always have, hopefully not always will, have had this problem with creating really interesting stories. If i'm honest I like art for art's sake, and I like to feel the story in the art... but I guess this doesn't cut it when you're pitching stories to people. But that's not my area anyway, i'm just the art guy. Whatever, i'm not making enough sense for this to be worth writing about. It was alright though, and while the week is gone for little reward, i'm happy with the little vid that I produced, and having all the characters together on the screen made me at least feel like i'd done a fair bit of work these past few weeks/months. Especially considering my (lack of) speed.
On to the MODELING!
I think I might've spent Monday from last week working on the model before the rest of the time was eaten by the pitch. Not entirely sure what I worked on at that time, and i'm sad that I didn't fulfil my hopes that I would have a finished model by this time, but I can show what I have, and it's far more impressive than an eyeball and whatever! Anyway, this is my progress:
There are some nice wireframes for all of you that care, too (NOONE!).
Still have a lot of work to do, hands will probably be a pain, and i have the legs and that, and also I want to rework the topology in the face and shoulders because I want these really to be stellar, how they look and how they animate. The area i'm most concerned with is the shoulders at the minute, so i'll show you some of the research that i've been carrying out recently, which is surprisingly a fair bit and looks quite neat now that i've put some pictures together. Here we go:
Okay this is what I've got with the model in it's current stages. I did a little test because of the problems that i've come up against in the past (how pro is that? ;)). Definitely not happy with the deformation at this point, but a big factor is the fact that these arms won't even be seen - they'll be hid the entire time underneath sleeves. The only reason i'm modeling this much is because it may be needed to collide with the n cloth on the sleeves if andy ever gets around to putting it in. SO these may actually be fine, but in the sake of learning i'm going to try to make them really nice anyway. It'll benefit me when I come to creating the rest of my characters anyway. I was a bit confused as to how to topologise it for maximum goodness, so I did some research...
This is a highly accomplished (i think) rig in it's nubile stages from the gnomon people. Something I noticed here, when compared to my model, even this guy, in a slightly further stage of rigging than my guy, he still gets the deformation on the top of the shoulder. This means I'm probably on the right track, i just need to tweak, and of course, a very large stage of the rigging process - paint the weights well. Also i believe this model in it's completed stage uses blendshapes on the shoulders, this is something i've little knowledge in... anyway, i digress.
These images are from this amazing tutorial on the area. I'd forgotten about this place until Georg reminded me, and actually i'm always coming back to this particular one. It's really great. So here are two pictures, very helpful. I'll probably try to copy this topology when I get back to work on monday.
Here's the link to it, anyway. And also you need a login. Anyway: http://area.autodesk.com/tutorials/chapter_2_building_a_cage
Forgot about this on friday! And i'm hungover now er so this post is gonna be super short. Edit: Lolz, it's about 5 hours after I started this post, I am now post-hangover as well, so I can put more energy into this. Good stúf. Bit of chatter first. I feel like i've had a mini holiday, since I missed Friday due to a different hangover <_< I've been doing that a lot recently, missing the Friday, not always because of hangovers, but anyway I should stop doing that. I work hard when i'm in uni but at home i'm a lazy bum and I love it. Gotta be pulling 5 day weeks to keep up the pace, i'm slightly slipping behind with the schedule that I sorted out. Nothing major though. This week i'll pull it together. woop woop.
So yeah, I did actually plan on working at home on Friday but annoyingly my version of Maya didn't even accept the files cause in uni we're on 2010, and at home I have 2008. This means I can't make screenshots like I planned either, but I'll get you some (hopefully) finished model shots of the main character of Andy's short in my next bloggy. For now, i'll chat a little guff about the experiences I've had this past week getting back into modeling.
Getting back into Maya was surprisingly easy. The majority of the shortcuts seem to be lodged in my brain quite firmly, that's good. And with my new, clean way of working I've had little problems recently. Had one crash but I only lost probably 20 mins of work or even less. My sense of topology is better too, but there's definitely room for improvement. The problem here is that i just literally don't have the experience necessary to work out certain problems. While I do find solutions, i'm positive there are better and faster ways of doing things.
I've officially started working for Andy, on 'Corked' now, in case I didn't mention, where i'll be modeling possibly all three of the characters, and also rigging them. I'm happy to be helping out, and since I have a creative outlet with my project, I can work to his designs exactly without meddling with any of the design choices. The only input I have is in the form of the hopefully careful and stylish modeling. I've really been trying to keep as faithful as possible to the designs, and being most perfectionist because I really want these characters to pop. Also in this process I get to see more what it'd be like working in an actual company as a modeler, as you have little creative freedom in certain jobs.
From a technical point of view, this week the troubles that I've been having are with the face in perspective. I mean I got a good likeness to the original turnarounds in the Front viewport fairly early on, and from the Side it was pretty accurate too. So both views look good, but in perspective something would look a little weird, something just wasn't working and I couldn't put my finger on it. It's weird, and there's no definite answer to the problem that I can think of, but I believe all that's necessary is to just continue modeling, and with a better idea of 3D space it should come. In this instance I just tweaked and tweaked until the guy started to look cool. He looks pretty sweet at the minute actually, his head is fully finished. But sadly there are no pics atm! Instead i'll show you the only pics I do have, in reference to the earzzzz. In a sec though. I'll just quickly say that I had trouble with the eyes of the character, too. They are really large in the turnarounds and look great, but after modeling they seemed to bulge. Need more experience in this area too. Again I just tweaked until they were better.
So ear stuff. Pics:
Here you see the half completed face and two ears. Notice i've not joined up the different parts of the face, I used this technique this time round and it worked really well for me. Easier than plapping in edge loops and having them run around the entire area of the face when you're fiddling around with difficult areas than the ear and the nose etc. The ear that I created first is the one on the left, and I started this with the outside loop, the part of the ear that folds over, and I worked my way in. With the second (and much more successful ear) I started on the inside, in the bowl or whatever it's called, and worked out. Both techniques could be used i'm sure, but I found the second one gave much nicer effects in my case. A much more organic looking and still stylised ear (even though it's not actually anatomically correct!). Also note that the lobe is poking out like that because of Andy's design choice, and as I said i'm being 100% faithful :D I like the ears anyway, might nick em for my later characters!
Here are the turnarounds i'm working from too, in case you wanted to see em. THIS IS NOT MY WORK! Credit to Andy
Oh, also I finished my evil baddie :D And I gave him possibly the best background yet? I think I may frame all my characters cause it just adds a really finished touch compared to the colour reaching the edges of the page. Also played with the frame with the evil lurking arms coming out at you. Here he is, disgusting and slimy:
For inspiration this week I don't think it would be art. It may be a bit umm.. flowery? I dunno, but I just watched Ray Mears in Canada on Iplayer (which I won't link because they take it all down, silly bastards), but I found that really inspirational, the way they were talking about how all of the animals and the trees rely on each other and also death to continue the CIRCLE OF LIFEEEEEEEE. (They didn't say that, but something more sensible) Anyway it was really inspirational and calming sort of. Anyway sorry for talking bollocks, I get like this when i'm hungover, I think it's the remains of the alcohol in my system. Until next week folks!
Front and side of his current state. Put some coloured lambert materials on for fun.
