clay models...

For the negotiations project i decided to create a couple of the characters I previously designed in 3D. To start this it was suggested I made them in clay to have a 3D version to work from and to get a better idea of how they would look from all angles. So here they are...a little bit rough in places and not absolutely exact...but good enough to get a rough idea of what I'm aiming for...

summer term...

Only a few days in and already there seems like a lot to be getting on with..and I have a feeling it's only going to get busier...

Method and Research - So far, with one essay in and marked, I'm feeling OK about the other two..hopefully I will have improved a little on the next literature review having had feedback from the first, and I feel like the second review and the film analysis are more focused towards my dissertation area now and will definately help towards it. I have found quite a few readings on the topic, however I still need to develop my ideas into an arguement or question as a final title...

Negotiations - for this project I have decided to create a couple of the characters I designed for my previous pre-poduction project in 3D. I really want to get to grips with Maya and have at least one successful project completed with it to show, even just to myself, that I can use it and learn it. Hopefully this will develop my skills in this area and give me a bit of a wider skill range coming into our final year projects.
The two characters I wanted to model are Marvin and Foon.



I think that these were my most successful characters and the ones I enjoyed designing the most in this project. As they are already designed and I have completed trun arounds for them I can hopefully focus on the modelling and am planning to hopefully get them both finished as static models. I would really love to learn how to rig them and eventually do some short character animations with them. However I definately don't think this is possible in the time given my experience with Maya. However I would really love to do this maybe over the summer, just to know I could if I tried, and have my very own characters to play with!
So, to start this project i am going to model them in clay so that I can see their form in 3D whilst modelling more clearly then in the turn arounds.

This is the last scene I did for the Assassins project. I think it looks ok..but I wasn't quite sure how the movement was meant to look. I wanted to make Grey look like a bit of a girl screaming and waving his arms..however the instructions were for the rat jump to be in a kind of slow motion style..so I wasn't sure if grey was meant to be the same. I also wasn't too sure if Grey should just be leaning away from the rat as i assume its the scene before he runs with his arm waving it away..or whether he was meant to be hopping from foot to foot in panic. Anyway..here it is for now..but of course changes can be made to fit with the rest of the animation or if its just not right...

Here are a few more scenes for the assassins project...this first one I think works quite well and is the first scene I started to practise getting the movement right for the characters so I used the basic movement from the first scene I worked on, and worked over it in flash to get the design of the character more accurate. It looks a bit odd here..again the video via YouTube..and seems to miss out a bit of Grey's leg movement in the second rotation..which it doesn't in flash versions..weird...but hopefully the actual version of it runs OK...as with the other videos on here which seem to run slower...



I also wasn't sure if the EEEEE was meant to be moving..so have left it for now as it can be tweened easily after if necessary. The next one is the character walking toward the camera..another attempt..still a bit odd..can't quite seem to get my head around this one..and it isn't coloured as without photo shop this takes me forever on flash, so I thought it best to get the movement right and ticked off before starting colour!



Tweening a train scene...again this doesn't show up well in this version...

So..it turns out the only way I can now upload videos on here is via youtube..annoying..however below are a few scenes I managed to get done in colour...I think the movement is going OK now..there could still be bits that need changing or cleaning up...particularly with the colouring as some parts of it are not quite exact and may not be quite right as Justin wants them. I will admit this took me quite some time as I couldn't get photoshop loaded onto my computer, and therefore coloured the scenes in flash where I couldn't get the paint bucket tool working either..it just refused..so most were coloured with a mouse - not exactly the most precise way of doing it..which is why some frames may be slightly out or look a little rough compared to others. So few of these may need altering...



In the newest version of the one above there are a few objects added in to fill the gap. All of these videos in flash also play at double the speed they appear here. I'm not sure why, but they also look a bit better running at the right speed rather then in slow mode!



I'm not so sure about this scene..I wasn't too sure how or what the lightening bolts were meant to look like..so I just had a go...