Duey Learns Ballet & artefact work

Kept forgetting to post over the past couple of weeks, but my client animation, Duey Learns Ballet, is on YouTube!



As for artefact work, here are some more finallised designs for Alice based off the feedback from the presentation.



And some designs for the Cheshire Cat.





Had a much tougher time with this. Trying to recreate the feeling of the Cheshire Cat while making him look as 'odd' as possible. I preferred the 'slinkier' look on the second set of designs, it makes him seem more sly like he can slip about here and here whenever he wants, which is what he does in the books. Whether this is agreed on remains to be seen.

Halfway through artefact 3

I've changed the theme of my artefacts. For the rest of them I'm going to choose characters from Alice in Wonderland and redesign them while keeping the feel of the characters the same. I think I'm going to make them in a more modern setting, but when designing their face and body shapes I'm going to use a simple version of their original design.

So here are my designs for Alice so far, along with the shapes used.

I'm going to pick the designs that work and develop the other aspects of their design such as hair, clothes and body language, then colour comes afterwards. By the end of it, I should be able to draw conclusions about which shapes, colour and other such character aspects work best for each character.

I'm going to post comparison pics between other renditions of Alice soon so I can further my ideas.

Background 2 - the dance studio exterior

Next up, the studio interior then the stage.

Duey mouth morphs

Just a quick example of how his mouth moves. Will rig him and the ballerina later this week.

Artefact 3 - the Child revisited

Quotes about the Jungian Child archetype:
"The mature personality of the Child archetype nurtures that part of us that yearns to be lighthearted and innocent, expecting the wonders of tomorrow, regardless of age." [source]

"Within each of us, the Innocent is the spontaneous, trusting child that, while a bit dependent, has the optimism to take the journey." [source]


The Designs
I'm branching off into two time periods from now on. Renaissance and modern day. So I'll start with the two designs I had based around those time periods.


(Click for larger versions)


The Question
Take a look at the two designs. Do these two characters look like how you would associate a Child archetype? If not, what would you suggest to alter their designs?
- colours?
- build?
- age?
- body language/expression?
- clothing?


Keep in mind that you can suggest anything you want for these designs. This way I can build up a variety of designs and with feedback and analysis, it will be much easier to figure out what works for these designs and why. Please bear in mind the general time periods when leaving feedback.

I thank everyone in advance for their feedback.

Ballerina model WIP

Here's a front and side shot of her so far. All I need to do is add her hair and then rig and texture her.

Still need to tweak her nose and such, but considering my previous luck with modelling human characters, this is definately my best model.

Artefact 1 - The Hero

Based from Jungian archetypes

"The hero, who pursues a great quest to realize his destiny" [source]

"The Savior is a hero who suffers for the benefit of his people. Oftentimes,
the archetypal hero makes a sacrifice for the betterment of theories. That
single quality will make him a savior." [source]


Design 1

The idea

• a kind of generic seeming character who also looked strong
• a cape to show travel and a journey for him to go on
• royal colours

Feedback

• 'knight in shining armour'
• seems like he's in a stand off
• colours are too dark
• he seems more like he's trying to atone for past mistakes, a hero who changes with the story

Design 2

The idea

• all over armour, a knight
• a red cape, associated with heroes such as Superman

Feedback

• try removing some of the armour, full armour not always needed in a hero
• give him a distant look, to his homeland or goal
• give him a caring smile, he's there for the people
• try a bigger build and let some of that build be visable through less armour
• cleanshaven? even mythological heroes were

Design 3

Idea

• add red tinge to armour to keep with the red cape
• armour not all over, the shoulderplate on his swordweilding arm is larger for better protection
• made some of the armour more practical
• has a softer, more caring face, will do what it takes to protect people

Feedback

• [added] chestplate seems bare, maybe add insignia of some kind?

Overall, most prefer the final design, but there are exceptions for design 2, as well.

Client project designs + storyboards

First of all, the mindmap.

The first designs. I went with the scary and cute scenario. The little girl was from an earlier idea I had, but decided to leave it because I wasn't getting any solid ideas for it.


The top-most designs were my favourites here, and the idea of him in a tutu showed up, too.

Rough sketch of the ballerina I planned to add in my animation, along with one last monster design. I still preferred the other design though.
And the storyboards. I'll let these speak for themselves.







Hopefully this'll take up 2 minutes, I already know it'll be enough work for me to take up the amount of time we'll be working on the client project.

Creating an animation, one piece at a time

The technique used to put all this together fascinated me, I never thought of putting Flash animation together in a video editor as such an effective method, but it works amazingly here. Definately gonna try it out when I get to create my first proper animation (which is in its planning stages, yay!)

Also, I've (very slowly) started work on revamping The Adventures of Sir Cuthbert Pencilton. Deadlines ultimately meant I didn't have time to put as much effort into it as I'd wanted to (specifically with lighting, sound effects and backdrops), so I plan on sorting that :)

Here's one backdrop I've revamped. It lacks the doodle look so much, but I still prefer it to the old one XD


Also, I'm a little confused with what's happening when we get back. Do we go straight into presentations, and should have done all our research during the holidays, or is it something else? I'm currently writing a questionnaire for my artifacts so I can at least say I've done something, I guess.

Simluated client brief, designs and storyboards

First of all, a copy of my proposal (I had issues with the dropbox, and I know this is late, sorry).

Download (password is 'uni', so people don't randomly download it)

So, for my project proposal, I've decided to focus on the more lenient (and hopefully more popular) message of saying that it's alright to file share and download as long as you support the artists you like. That way the file sharing is no different to hearing something on the radio and TV and the artists you want to support can keep going. This is hard to pull off in 20 seconds, so I had to simplify the message a lot.

Instead, I'm going to use the example of 'when you X, God kills a kitten' (with X being something bad/sinful/something a person wants someone else to see). However, I'm going to have a pirate squishing the kittens with a mallet with a squeaking sound from them, making it seem more comical. I've found the 'God kills a kitten' fad on the internet to have more of a sense of humour about it, so people hopefully won't think it's trying to see you as a criminal for whatever you do like most adverts.

Here are the charater designs:
Simplified to make it easier to model, texture and animate. Also simple because 20 seconds isn't long enough to justify a details character design when it will appear for such a short time.

The Storyboards:

Pretty self-explainatory, really. If you don't pay for music you like to support artists, kitten go squish, if you do, kitten gets petted, which means happy kitten ^^

Slow down

So I went to read the article we were asked to go through for next tutorial and I hit a bit of a stumbling block; fancy fonts + black text on white background = I can't read it properly. I spent about 5 minutes on one paragraph trying to understand it but it wasn't working. So now I have to get some coloured paper to print it on, since I end up working better with that.

First week wasn't too bad. Still a bit miffed that I can't create a 2D animation for my mock client project after they pretty much said 'we'd rather you create an inferior 3D project than anything 2D'. That put me in a sour mood. I might be able to make my idea work, but it'll be about 5x more tedious and not as good. Geez, thanks for letting me be creative in my own way.

Here's what I honestly want to do, animation-wise.

A fun colourful style based entirely in 2D. I know we're meant to expand what we can do for our portfolio, but I don't think I've even been given a fair chance to create a 2D animation while at uni.

I'm going to animate this idea in 2D when I've got my ideas together, and I can't wait :D

An odd game's (kind of) redesign

Anyone here heard of Terramex? It's a game I've got on my old (and awesome) Acorn Archimedes, which I still love playing. Trouble is, not many people of heard of it. Truth be told, I like it that way, but it'd be nice to see it's weirdness get a little recognition in the odd obscure reference or picture.

So I decided to redesign and recreate in 3D certain aspects of the game. Y'know, as a little warm up for the final year. Here's what I've got so far.

Some characters/enemies (reference pics below).


Top left is Henri Beaucoup (in the middle), who I designed with his chin way too pointy ^^;
Middle right is Big John Caine (to the right of Henri in the pic), who's my first ever attempt at a jaw shape like that.
And in the background's a really creepy looking feint image of Prof Eyestrain (top right in my sketches)

Middle left's a really freaky monster that doesn't seem to do anything. It just had a really unnatural repeating movement and scared the hell out of me as a kid.
Bottom left's a dragon-pterodactyl type thing that flies in straight lines and kills you if you touch it. It can get kind of annoying when you get you're timing wrong on one part of it.

And finally, bottom right is the 'main baddy', if you will (well, I get the comet's that, but it doesn't do much in the long run). They randomly pop out of rocks and kill you. Timing means nothing to them, which is why they're a total wind up. This one's next to the first item you collect in the game; the vacuum cleaner. It flies. Awesome.

Right, now doodles and explainations are out of the way, here's a 3D model of the flying thing I started work on. I haven't got a clue how to UV unwrap it to texture it though :/

Not bad for a few hours work, if I do say so myself. And this coming from the person who had a challenge with Sir Cuthbert and his mad lot.

Finding a 'new' style and a game about a fox

I decided a long time ago I needed to break away from the usual anime style all the time (no way I'm giving it up completely though), but only recently did I decide to give it another crack. Trying to make my work look less anime, more 'my own' (long limbs are apparently my style), this was my first try at something new.




I've alway had issues drawing realistic human faces, even with life drawing to help me, so I kinda tries a compromise. With Japanese culture seeming to pop up a little more lately, I think I could get away with this style for something commercial, if the need calls for it. But we'll have to see. Had some positive feedback from people about it so far though. I'm planning on entering a manga contest this summer in this style to try and get some consistancy from it.


I spent the last couple of days playing a game on Newgrounds called William and Sly, although personally I don't see why the man's name is first, the fox does all the work. It's got beautifully designed graphics and a very smooth framerate, with a great level of exploration and secret areas to find. I'd recommend people take a look at it, I find it very calming. Well, except for when those creatures pop out of the ground at you.


Got to find out my game work and try to find a way to record a run through of my level. It's nothing worth looking at, but considering I don't play FPSs on account of them making me feel sick, I don't think I did too badly for a first try. Well, you'll see it when I can find screencapture software that doesn't make huge filesizes / bad quality.

Visualisation Designs

Part two of my project work, so here's my visualisation designs.

I decided to recreate a piece of scenery I have seen in a dream, to try and improve my skills in properly representing what I have seen in my head so other people can see it.

My first idea was a dreamworld I used to visit a lot, but in all honestly, I found it too personal to me to try and recreate it for projectwork.

I decided one one of the scenic areas I had seen, one of which being two parts of a ruined castle on either side of a road, completely isolated from anything else.
Another idea I had was a large square in the middle of a village, with some kind of statue/monument in the center.
I wanted to go with the castle ruins, but I didn't think there was enough to it, so I tried mixing scenery from another dream with it. The valley would've been too difficult to recreate in 3DS Max and I was told I didn't need to make it overly complicated.

I did some more concept ideas for my castle ruins.

And some speedpaints, which is something I really needed to practise. I've never been too good creating an image quickly on a single layer.Here's the finished walkthrough.


Also, my visualisation side project isn't going to be posted as soon as I'd hoped, I'm having major texturing problems.

Animation Designs

I've been sketching during the entire project, but I always prefer to upload everything in bulk for some reason ^^; So here's the first of three posts of designs for each of the projects.

Just some basic ideas and a couple of character design ideas. I love guinea pigs, so this was my first thought.

Posted this before, but I'm putting them all in one entry so I know where they are. I wanted to design something that I don't think anyone else would do, and since I love drawing, I wanted to try pencil designs.

Tried drawing some more weird designs to see if there was any I like. I thougt they looked too close to other anthropomorphic designs I've seen online, so I didn't go with any of them. A potential rival for my favourite pencil character found it's way onto this page, too.
Quick reference pics of the main character in my animation, along with a concept doodle of his sidekick.
Some more concept ideas. I tried to see if he looked good weaing Victorian clothes, but it looks like a top hat, monocle and moustache are the most you can put on a pencil XD I'd got his sidekick's design figured out by now.

And there's these I made with colour ideas and renders.







And now, here's the finished animation! Looking a fair bit better than the DV-AVI export, I gotta say o.o