Zoo punk

So we had excellent weather last week, 15+ Celsius in mid-March. And then we had our Zoo trip this week, and it was about 0 Celsius. Blargggggh.

Anyways, we only need one page from this trip, which is a relief. That said, the only drawings that were of any use was the very last one I did and one I drew today from a photo I took. Everything else was rather rough gestures, and since it's only one page I felt I'd do better if I just submitted one or two studies.

So here's what I've put together, not sure whether to use one, the other or both, but I'll figure it out tomorrow:

Also, I put together something in Maya for Joel Beaudet's 4rth year film, it's a control panel that one of the characters interact with. I've already made a few minor props and I'm planning to make a bunch more, which I better get a move on if they're to be of any use to him. I don't know what deadlines he has but I bet they're coming up quick. Anwyays, here's some views of the control panel:

The main concern I have is that I didn't texture this, he didn't say I had too and I haven't had a lesson on texturing in Maya yet anyways. The colors on that Mario Kart I made is a very basic default texture applied directly to the polygons, no UV mapping was involved. You could use the same technique for most of the bits on this, but there are a few display meters that need an image stickered on to them. Might do it myself some day for fun, but for now I'll keep focusing on just making the geometry, which I am happy with on this.

Older Berry

So this one was put together fast. Fortunately the next assignment is a clean up of either this animation or the previous one (aka: guy angry at the dutch clip) and considering the way I make my roughs cleanup shouldn't be too too difficult. Mostly I figure this because I make sure to maintain the volumes of each part even at this rougher stage, some things will need to be fixed still but volume is a very important factor here.
So he's a bit too active for my intention, but I often worry my animation style is too stiff, so I figure if I overshoot to correct that eventually I should land on the 'sweet spot'. The line is from Monty Python's Holy Grail for those who don't recognize it, I used the lizard I made for character design, the design I still don't have here yet...
Animation!

And there's lots more of this lizard to come. I think I may use this animation for the clean-up, and I'm already using this guy for the final Maya project too. Here's what I cooked up today for that, it's halfway done already after less than 3 hours...

People keep asking if I want to be a modeller, I'm certainly interested, I'm not sure if that's all I'll do if that is how I start up, I might move onto animating. Storyboarding also interests me... well we'll see in about two years won't we?

1885!

Love Back to the Future so so much.

Anyways, our latest character assignment involved choosing one of three time periods and creating 4 characters for a story within chosen period. I picked a western, so that I could have a train in the story. I love trains so so much. We needed to have a hero/heroine, someone they love (romantic or platonic), a villain and a comic relief. We needed a lineup showing their relative sizes, and a sheet with 3 poses and 3 facila expressions for each of them. So here's what I got:

Our final storyboard for this year will be using these characters, I've got the story ironed out and over this week I'll have the beat boards made for that. Yes, Uncle Sam is the protagonist, of course he's not THE Uncle Sam but I took advantage of the pun.

Basically the story will revolve around all 4 of them on a train, Sam bought some boots for Violet's birthday, Bullhorn wants to steal them to give to his own wife for her birthday, then during the standoff on top of the moving train between Sam and Bullhorn Jacob remembers that he already got Violet the same set of boots. So Violet and Jacob get off the train at their stop, Sam and Bullhorn are stuck in the standoff for eternity on the train as it drives into the sunset.

And at the same time that's going I'm working on the muzzle animation, using a character from the previous character assignment (which it seems I haven't put up here, fix that in a bit), it's like the human sync except it had to be an animal with a muzzle (dog, cat, lizard, bear etc.) but it doesn't need the whole body, so I'm making it just from the waist up. And that's due Wednesday, Beat-boards are due Friday, a Digital Painting is due sometime this week as well, along with a short acting performance. And I'm also trying my best to make some extra 3D props for a 4th year's film... WHEEE!