Tuesday 15 February 2011
Monday 14 February 2011
Week 1 work
Hand
It looks more like a glove, but not bad for my first effort modelling a hand. I think the thumb is particularly good.
To make this I extruded and shaped a cube in top and side view over the hand picture one I got to the fingers I subdivided the cube and extruded it from there.
I have now found this helpful tutorial:
I will go back to this exercise using this tutorial in the near future to try and create a more realistic hand that can be animated well.
These are the week one notes, introducing character modelling and discussing some modelling techniques. Unfortunately for me lecture notes are all based on 3D max and I have chosen to do this module in Blender as I have more experience in the program.
Disney Art
Tangled
This is a character from the newest Disney film, a 3D feature length animation of a classic fairy tale. Practicing sketching Disney art.
Sunday 13 February 2011
Concept Art
Design and Planning
Eyes
Creating Drake's face based on Donald's
- Long spiky hair.
- Bigger more dopey eyes.
- More predominant eye brows.
- Big shiny teeth.
- Sunglasses instead of hat (aviators = classic).
- More detail on the bill to give the look of more of a chin.
- Hair at the back of the head also.
Clothing and feature ideas
How it might all work.....
Trying envision how the characters bones and features might work based on the small amount of character animation experience I already have.
Inpiration 2
Max
Max is a character in the Goofy universe and is a similar character to the one I was thinking of for mine. I want to create a character similar to Max for the Duck Tales universe, but not exactly the same. Max is more of a troubled teen, I want my character to be a bit more cool and confident and also a bit older.
The hair and eyes are similar to the character I have envisioned as are the baggy clothes. But I want a character that is a cross between this and Donald and less goofy. My character will have big shiny straight teeth.
Bones
I need to start identifying bone names in a human and get into the practice of naming bones correctly when I create my own custom skeleton. The examination and influence of studying the human skeleton should help create a better working bone structure with a more convincing movement during animation.
Saturday 12 February 2011
More Character Models
Old duck model
This is a cartoon style duck but it is not anthropomorphic like I want my character to be.
Walk Cycles
- Happy
- Energetic
- Held hight (happy/confident)
This is a link because the embedding has been disabled. But this is meant to be a standard walk cycle, I personally think it looks quite up-beat confident and perhaps even cocky. I like the way the shoulders sway back and forth.
I want to go for a chilled out relaxed (cool) walk cycle maybe a lazy type walk. After studying walk cycles I have chose these few that I feel may be relevant to the look that I want for my character. The Disney one is good but too over the top. I think this one and the Lion walk cycles are more like what I am looking for. The other thing about the lion walk cycle is the fact that is not as fluid as the other's its a bit more robotic, but it is very affective none the less and due to it's more simple nature it would be more appropriate for a game character, which is what I am trying to go for with my character.
This is an extract from the animtionmentor.com "Tips & Tricks. Learn to animate from professional animators" page.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 4, 2011
Can You Provide Some Tips on the Mechanics of Walking?
A walk is such an easy thing.
An easy thing to screw up.
Too much overlap on the swinging arms. Too much bobbling up and down. Too much head sway. Those are a lot of distractions!
Let’s focus on what is going on in the body. One leg is pushing off the earth and moving forward to make contact and propel the body forward. (Can you tell I took physics in college? I didn’t pass, but I took it.) What the foot does then is capture the weight of the body to make sure its owner doesn’t come crashing to the ground.
That’s essentially it – as far as the legs go. It’s a fall. Every single step. After that foot crosses the magical midpoint of the center of gravity, that big old body wants to fall.Mr. Foot connected to Mrs. Leg has to hurry up and make sure the body doesn’t fall, so it has to hurry up just a bit to get in front of the body and stop its fall.
So there’s the silly explanation for what happens. How can you put that into practice? Something I do all the time is observing people. I love to go to the airport (no, not to just hang out) but to watch people get from one place to another. What do their feet do? How do their hips rise and fall for each step. Just how much swing is in their arms? I study and learn.
Then I put it in the computer. A long time ago, I used to do mechanical exercises in the computer by using a layered approach to animating. This goes against all that’s in my fiber of being now, but I used it strictly as a learning technique to understand force, momentum and balance on a walk (it was actually a skip for Captain Hook).What I did was took his COG (center of gravity) and translated that in space. I made him feel like he was walking (I know I said skipping, but I’m stretching the truth to make a point). I would then add a little bit of rotation. Get that momentum going up and then have a nice overlap as the foot would hit (even though I didn’t animate that foot hitting yet).
Then I would go up the chain – mid body, upper body, neck, and head. I would add some twist on the body so it would go the opposite way the hips were going until the shoulders were completely the opposite of the hips.
Next would be the legs. At first, I would do ONLY the steps, no transitions. I would keep this in stepped mode too. It would look funky to the outsider but to us abnormal folk (animators), it looked fine. After I got this placement correct, I would add my spacing for the feet. It takes the foot longer to get to the transition (the passing pose) than it does to the impact.
Arms would follow and so on – you get the picture.
My point?
My point is, I got to feel how EACH part of the body FELT during the walk. What were the hips doing? How much opposite were the shoulders? Just how much x rotation was needed? All of this was answered by doing that little exercise. By doing that, I gained knowledge of what goes into a walk.
Sometimes you have to do the grunt work to get the good stuff…
Guest Blogger Mike Gasaway
Demonstrating Personality in Animation
DONALD DUCK
The Wise Little Hen (the first appearance of donald duck June 9th 1934)
- Donald's voice was performed by Clarence Nash, one of the most identifiable voices in animation history.
- Donald's personality famous trait is an explosive temper and he is easily provoked.
- Donald Duck has been officially honored as the third most popular cartoon character after Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny
Donald get's angry in Disney Film
Demonstrating anger:
- Frowning.
- Clenching fists. Starts in front of face then brings down to sides.
- Shaking.
- Build up (becomes more furious) starts to move more and more quickly.
- Screams
Tuesday 1 February 2011
Donald
Expressions
http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs44/f/2009/142/c/a/donald_duck_60_expressions_by_animatorio.jpg
As my character is from the Duck tales universe and my character is based on Donald Duck then looking at his expressions and movements should prove very useful.
In order to create facial expressions there will have to be a set of bones carefully positioned around the face not just the body.
We were advised to choose a film (one part of the Disney universe) to add a character to.
I chose Duck Tales because I think animating a bill instead of a mouth will be interesting, I have all ways liked the Duck Tales universe and I thought of a character that I think would fit into it because they don't really have a duck character with this type of look/personality yet.
Eyes
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