Task: 3D Model Animation - Key Poses

Before getting started on animation, I had to work on my key poses, making sure they were strong. This is my blocked animation and now I'm getting started on the inbetweens and adding in the idle point where the character is mainly making eyecontact with the bug that will fly and make him lose his balance. What I found the most useful was a visual reference of videos.

Task: 3D Model Animation - Brief

The brief is to create a 12 second 3D animated piece.

"Your character is in the tree pose postion in a confident manner when he loses his focus because of a bug. The character responds by stumbling in a worried manner.

Task: 3D Character Model - Rigging

There were parts in rigging that I found really hard, so I decided to try out miximo's auto-rig program. It did work and showed the animation properly but the program did not take into account my characters shape. The belly cause a problem in the animations and the armpit would break and stretch looking wrong. However the knees and elbows did bend properly. Maximo do take feedback and it'd be worth telling them to add in more things you could add in the beginning like waist line and where the neck starts etc. If there was also a way to fix the points with more detail, that would be helpful. The knees needed fixing, and after talking to Rob, I just had to treat them like the elbows, with a piece behind them for rotation.

On Miximo however, you can download animations. I found this one to suit my character well.

Task: 3D Character Model - Modelling

Step 4: Modeling the Face and Body seperately 

The most trouble I had while modelling was the face, because I made it quite boring in my sketch ups. It took me a while, but I eventually modeled a face that had more personality.

I followed the sketches I had, and eventually saw that it needed work in the legs and the definition of parts of the body. It developed very well, and I'm proud of the result.

Task: 3D Character Model - Sketches

Step 3: Idea Sketches

Step 4: Sketch Development + Clay

I chose 3 designs from my brainstorm that I liked and think followed the brief and tried to look at how they'd look when 3D. The two small designs, I thought, lacked personality. I decided to try and develop the larger character and then see how the angle would look through clay (plasticine) modeling.

Task: 3D Character Model - Inspiration Images

Step 2: Collect inspiration images and Brainstorm

Task: 3D Character Model - Brief Interpretation

Production Requirements:
3D character
Webcast Series
Attracting interest from a production studio
Prime Time TV Audience
Break away from a shallow TV mould

Design Requirements:
Personality & Memorable
Cartoony
Little Detail
Dimensionality in the head
No hair or restrained hair treatment
Clean and fairly simple forms
Start with a drawing and/or 3D clay model
[VISUAL REFERENCE IS ESSENTIAL]
Simple colour (essentially no textures or extra detail)
Geometry needs to be clean
Elbow and Knees need to deform appropriatley 
The head and the body seperate stages but still relate to each other.

Step 1: Research things in brief that you don't completely understand or need to develop

Webcast: Broadcasting over the internet

Personality: Instead of trying to make a character have personality, try and identify, what type of personality is needed for the character? Happy, Sad, Smug, etc.

3D Clay model: I've never really worked with Clay, but for this project it would help to understand the different views of sketches. I need to do some research about how to go about clay modelling.

Modelling

We started modeling and I'm very interested in learning all the features avaliable on 3DS Max for modeling. 

The first thing we did was edit a box and start getting introduced with the editable poly features. We then used these new skills for an attempt for the face edited from a plane. After that, we model from a box to get a body.

For the body, Working where you start with a plane definitly works better from me but each time I've done it this way I end up making the model a female.

This is my starting attempt for more of a masculine model. There still a lot for me to do for the male body. But the initial shape I've started with works.

We've also started to animate hands. At the moment, this is something I think I need to work on. Either to make more personalised or make more realistic.