Category: Animated Narratives

I wanted to spend a bit of today modelling up some better looking leaves. They’re unbevelled, but It’s better looking than the previous leaves I was using for my ghost’s head:

I tried to follow the guide that Alec provided me with:

However it was maybe a little to advanced for me right now? When it comes to doing the proper model this week, and I have more time, I am going to try and make my leaves look a little more like the ones in this tutorial if I can. I followed this tutorial, only paying attention to the parts where this youtuber models the leaves:

I then made a few little tweeks to the model itself, smoothing the body, manipulating and scaling the leaves, trying to make the eyes sit on the body a little better and reshaping the pupils:

I then went in and added an ‘inner body’ just to give the ghost the illusion of some mass; I might add a colour to this eventually, I’m not 100% sure!

Finally, I wanted to play around with the tail a bit more – I deleted the faces and modelled a new tail with the Curve tool:

I first started with Alec’s less with the ultimate walker; I felt like I hadn’t animated anything in a long time and I wanted something to warm myself up and get me into the head-space for  working:

I didn’t want to spend too much time labouring over this, but this is a rough pass and I’m pretty pleased with it! This was a great exercise for warming myself up.

I might go back in at some stage and have the walker’s left leg hit the floor before its right, but other than that I’m pretty happy.

I then moved on to Mike’s lesson on Parent/Constraint and IK exercises:

I then moved on to the blendshapes exercise which was quite fun:

My group and I also discussed how we were going to begin our previs, and I made up a provisional pro-ghost gardener for Corey – who is going to record the previs – so that he has something to move:

Thursdays class was centred around rigging how to start applying movement to our models. We were first tasked with a very simple rig to make a cylinder move, and looking at applying skin weights:

We were then given a water wheel, which already had a controls applied, and were taught how to apply both parents and constraints to these objects:

Finally, we were taught how to rig up a tentacle, which I animated very badly but I’m still pretty pleased with it.

After Lunch, Alec looked at my model progress so far and gave me some tips on how to improve it. I made the bottom of the ghost a little fatter so that the transition from the body to tail isn’t quite as dramatic, and it gives is a little bit less of a ‘sperm’ feel LMAO. I also played around with the eyes a little, added a few materials just to get the overall feel happening and added a couple of arms. Alec also linked me a video that I will be using going forward in order to model my leaf:

I wanted to mock up one more finalised concept and start modelling for our animation in Animated Narratives. I decided to do a more finalised concept piece for the grave yard layout and colours:

I spoke to my group about the colours and atmosphere of the setting, and we all agreed that the night time pinks, purples and greens would be great for communicating the time of day and tie in with our stylised approach.

I then wanted to be sure to start something in terms of modelling for this class as we have a little break from modelling in 3D literacy. This was, surprisingly, more difficult than I thought – but I got there in the end, although I am not fully finished as I need some advice on sculpting the arms and mouth of this ghost!

It’s by no means perfect, but I think it’ll be ok for the purposes of starting our previs and rigging.

I have to admit that I have somewhat neglected this module, as I’ve been so wrapped up in the 3D Literacy modelling deadline that has just passed. I’m really trying to get a bit of work out in a similar fashion to how we were taught to concept in our animation in our last semester, therefore I thought doing a few thumbnail passes and trying to figure out the space was a good idea. Hopefully my productivity improves  going forward, now that things have the chance to chill out a little.

I wanted to do a little digging into cemetery aesthetics – which sounds a little morbid to be honest, but I think some of these are absolutely beautiful. This was just for the purpose at looking at different colours, different grave stone forms and shapes, getting myself into the mind set of thinking about the environment of this animation.

I showed the thumbnails to the group, and they really liked the stylised thumbnail of the bright pink and green combination. We all agreed that we liked the idea of taking quite a stylised approach with the colour palette, to match the forms and shapes of the characters.