Monday class
Today Henry talked us through Blocking out characters in sculpting. Then asked us to block out a quadruped.
We were given a reference to help block it out. This was pretty fun, since it was decently easy. Also we got to mirror the legs so only had to sculpt 2 instead of 4.
I then colour coded it and saved it as a quadruped.
Then using this reference we made it more horse like.
Then I added the muscles using this photo as a reference. This was really fun I liked layering the muscles as it was easy to block out the muscles using the reference and it looks pretty good fairly quickly, unlike a lot of my sculpting that is in an ugly phase for most of the sculpt.
Then I added some extra volume to mimic where skin would cover the gaps between the muscles, and then smoothed out the horse. But I wanted to keep the horse muscley looking as I thought it looked cool.
I then tried to expand on the fox creature design as it felt like it was a little boring or at least was lacking something. I think I was still stuck on the design for script 4 so I added the back scales, to mimic tree bark. To give them a camouflage.
I couldn’t tell if I was just stuck in script 4 so I decide to do some dnd character doodles to see if I could get any fun ideas from completely new characters. I thought about maybe making them more cat like instead of fox, but I like the facial structure of the fox more, it is more interesting to me, then I thought maybe I could give them wings. So I made some sketches.
I really liked it but I wondered if it was too much? I asked a few friends opinions, and they also liked the wings but did express that they weren’t sure how it work work anatomically as that is part of the brief. So I decided to look into it.
I started with looking at the muscles, then the skeleton, then looked up some things about dragon flies.
They don’t have bones. which I kind of knew but also didn’t, i thought they would have to have some, but any insect that has splattered against a window doesn’t leave little bones behind.
Muscles because they don’t have bones I looked up what their muscles looked like. I couldn’t find diagrams but found out they do have muscles that are small tube like muscles.
Body break down I then found out that the muscles that control the wings being able to fly are in the thorax. I made my fox a little more round that a normal fox would be, in particular the chest area, so this could be useful to store the muscles used for the wings in.
Also because of the bark like scales I added to the fox, they could kind of work like an exoskeleton, to protect the muscles that are used for flight.
Because the flapping of the wings motion reminds me of lungs, I thought about the organs of a fox and how they would have to shift a bit to make room for the wing muscles.
There is an area of longer protrusions on the spine near the shoulder bone, just below the scruff of the neck. I could give my creature a small hump then have the two muscles divide along that bone into the shoulder bone as they also have a decently large muscle mass. so my thinking is that I could put the flight muscles close to the shoulder muscles, the benefit of using dragonfly muscles is that they expand inwards when in use not outward. so i don’t have to worry too much, (still have to worry a little) about the shape of my character deforming when I pose the wings.
I drew out a foxes skeleton and organ system. So I could better map out where the muscles for the wings would go. Because of the unique way a dragonflies wings work I think I could fit the two muscles atop the shoulder blade and have the muscles expand towards the spine. There would of course have to be an internal block so they don’t damage the spine when they expand.
I drew out where I believe the wings could function anatomically. Also because of the almost exoskeleton in my design, (the bark scales/shell) the wings could form similar to actual dragonflies, in that they form under the bark scale, then when it sheds/ metamorphosis, the wings fill with blood and come out, then the blood goes back into the body, leaving the wings with many hollow tubes, so once they dry they become sturdy and crisp. Able to propel well.
So I decided to start blocking it out the base of a fox since the things i am still debating on are extras.
I started blocking out my character by making the base a fox, since that is the majority of the character.
Thursday class
Today Alec talked to us about different types of walk cycle, and how the emotion behind the walk can effect the tempo of the walk, so someone will walk faster when angry, slower when sneaking, etc.
We watched through the snooty walk cycle on blackboard by Alec.
and made a walk cycle in blender.
I tried to follow the tutorial by Alec. it was pretty confusing. I struggled a lot with this one.
My friend then talked me through how they did it and it was much easier to understand, and it turned out much better.
Then Aodhan gave us the task of animating a double bounce walk cycle. I couldn’t open the reference he gave us on blackboard so i looked up what a double bounce is.
Also this time I acknowledged that this is only half of a walk cycle. so I remembered to flip it for the other leg too.
I was placing the feet on the same plane and Aodhan told me to separate them onto two lines, and it looks much clearer now.
I’m gonna try to re-attempt some of the walk cycles, as now that I know they aren’t full walk cycles I think they will look much better.
Also it will be good to have walk cycles I’ve made that I can reference.
Walk
Double bounce (shown previously)
Strut
Shuffle
Sneak
Run- I made this on two’s and that is why it looks more like a jog than a run.