This project requires the research and use of inspiration from the Codex Seraphinianus, a starting point in the project.

The researching part started with finding a piece of the Codex that was used for inspiration, the page shown above with the fishes was the starting point for this project taking elements from the top two a shark like creature and then a fish inside of a scuba-diving type attire these two were the main sources of influence on the project.

After figuring out which would influence our work the next stage was creating a mood board to find artistic influences to help isolate a style throughout the course of the project an end goal of a visual design. This started with looking at the real life animation, specifically sharks to get a grasp of understanding how they look in real life then moving onto scuba diving gear and astronaut outfits and they both have similar ideas behind them and share similar design elements the biggest difference being materials used for them as rubber/neoprene materials are used for undersea traversal however large helmets and breathing apparatus’ are both found on them. Fishbowls have been a common trope relating to cartoon interpretations of space travel.

After looking at real life examples the next was moving onto artistic influences such as the Crow: The Legend a VR visual showcase which has the audience member experience the story in VR and has a full immersive environment. The other influences are various cartoon sharks, like Mr. Shark from The bad guys and Jabberjaw from the show of the same name. After other visual designs were used classic looney tunes and stylistic designs of human faces were also researched and used for inspiration. A balance between sharp and smooth angles had to be considered due to the animal used.

After looking some research the next was doing sketches based on what was found and initial sketches of ideas, this included scuba gear and realistic sketches of sharks to understand which directions best works for the design. Some cartoon inspired poses and sketches were created.

More sketches relating to ideas relating to the helmet and how to design the bodysuit.

This page was to figure out if pushing the design into less cartoon-y and more uncanny and off with black eyes instead of more standard ones. Cartoony would be more appealing while the black eyes could have an appeal in the opposite direction.

Refining the shark himself, figuring out different styles and approaches for the eyes and thinking about body shape, focusing on slim designs was considered more due to the process of animating. If the body was bulky it might make the idea of him swimming in a cartoony way difficult so slimmer helped allow for easier reading of limbs, this was discussed with a tutor.

Creating some more sketches of realistic shark designs, body shapes and poses to help push the design in a way that would make him fairly flexible when animating. Some style sketches to think about making them more classic cartoon or more modern. Lastly sketches and colours of rough concepts for the shark in a rendered state, the colour of his clothing and the potential use of caustics to help give the impression of being underwater.

The final sketches of the shark, refining his body shape and his clothing and keeping what may be needed for the character.

The final reference sheet for the character, including the original sketch, the inked and coloured version of his body and then a final version with all clothing on and details maintained.

The design of the shark needed some second hand opinion on the idea cause elements of the design might of been able to be adjusted further, the most notable is the size and shape of his body as the character has a fairly bulky body rather than slim however the neck made it difficult to figure out which way to go with elements cause a large neck and small body might of been vastly disproportionate to the rest creating an unappealing design. The most important aspect of the design is that if it reads well and reads clear especially for animation.

The initial blocking stages of the shark’s body to near-final sculpt.

The heavily refined version from block shape to highly detailed model and making the small designs like muscles, the connection to arms then scapula and overall connections throughout the body and also making sure the neck to body is still correct. Lastly details like scars and wrinkles etc. were done which was used from alphas created for zbrush and then dragged and dropped onto the model allowing for smaller sharp details.

Lastly the clothing from blocking to refinement to completed detailed body. Each piece of clothing was created individually then merged together with its mirrored self like gloves, belt and shoes. The body suit was all one piece and some asymmetry was needed to allow for the entire body to not look so perfectly symmetrical.

A fin which initially roughed out in zbrush then changed to a 2D texture which made the fin easier to animate as it was just a plane on the body rather than a whole new piece plus design wise it was difficult to achieve an accurate appealing fin.

After the sculpt it was brought into maya and retopologized heavily reducing the polycount and focusing on creating topology that allows for better animation specifically the face however the elbows, knees and finger joints were all considered and adjusted to help for better bending and flexing.

Once the topology has been redone the UV’s are fixed up and then its brought into substance painter to create the textures. Baked lighting was used an gradients as well as baking the high poly model onto the low poly to retain all of the details from the high poly model. Also a smart material of scales was applied to both the clothing and the shark’s body itself. The biggest obstacle was substance itself as crashing with ambient occlusion and sometimes break substance as well as UV problems which had to be fixed several times before being final.

The wireframe of the whole model with no textures.

The texture of the skin applied to the mesh, showing the details of all the muscles on the body and keeping even small details like scars and scales.

The final fully textured version of the model with extra details like valves, hard surface modeling done in maya was used to help with those parts as it would be faster to create than sculpting in zbrush and the models don’t have to be overly detailed due to their size.

Another model done in maya this time finding an image of a fish and hard surface modeling around the image to create a simple fish shape, as the model will be fairly small the overall detailing doesn’t have to be high so its created as low poly as possible even using the image it was referenced with and then UV’d with the original image as the texture.

A problem that happened was due to the method of putting the mesh over the clothing, what was done was taking the original body mesh and placing it over the clothing and using that as topology rather than doing more with this method its possible to save some time and the topology is cleaner cause it was already done on the base, however issues like this can occur were small details can be distort and if not noticed on time can break some parts of the model which was found and corrected to the best of my ability.

Using advanced skeleton helped create the rig as it allows for a quick n’ easy way to put together a professional-type rig with limitations, in this case the body was done first and allows for finger bending, arms and legs and has IK/FK switching. Then it has a facial rig which takes a lot more effort as you place points on the face and have to make sure the topology is good and symmetrical as it tries to create all the bones in a symmetrical manner however it is possible to do asymmetrical character faces. A change that was done was to simplify the eye lids as in their original form can have a lot of unneeded controls.

After advanced skeleton created the body and rigged it, the next step was cleaning up the influences so everything flowed corrected as originally the model had very harsh, sharp bending which needs to be lightened for the model to have a cleaner bend.

A quick example of how the rig operates and moves from the body movements, hands and thighs/legs and overall capabilities of advanced skeleton with the rig.

An issue that occurred near the end of the rigging stage with the model as parts of the model when pushed hard which break and bend in a way that needed to be fixed however due to time limitations it was difficult to fix in time however issues with the mesh are hidden with the animation.

The first stage of the animation, making the key poses for the animation on stepped as it helps show the general feeling of the animation while also making poses easier to read, once this was done we moved onto spline for the rest of the animation, unlike other projects this one was done almost entirely in spline to make the transition easier and less work overall.

Using references of a hop and a standard breastroke kick helped achieve the goals of the animation as it was planned to have him hop slightly then jump into his swimming pose the idea to imply he was already underwater and could just jump and float in the ocean. The principled helped in achieving this as well, as staging, squashing and stretch, timing and spacing and a lot of the other principles came in to help give the animation the achieved desire specifically him swimming.

The first half of the animation roughed out this involving him looking around which was added later as going straight into the hop felt like it needed a moment to establish the scene. The first key of this will be used later to create a complete loop of the animation.

An experiment that was attempted was using facial tracking with the rig to see if it could replace the process of animating the face however this process came off, awkward and the lack of control in some areas felt a bit overwhelming and planning for using it from the start of animating might help make it more usable however a lot of the tracking itself is eradicate and hard to focus its control so the solution was to hand animate it instead of using the tracking.

After finishing the animation next was onto blender to fix the model up, however the results were good in blender using a boolean to keep the water in the correct level, which is what the video helps with understanding however the process didn’t translate to sketchfab which was what was the final platform for the work, due to time and struggles using the maya version below was the solution. Another goal in blender was using a curve to create smears or trails to help express the idea of underwater however the results would require more time. Another issue was the path used from the maya version didn’t translate to blender or sketchfab but directly from maya it worked fine most likely due to the animation being baked which it was in the maya version.

A test of sketchfab in VR, model being scaled and the animation can be viewed in a VRheadset.

The final animation and the model uploaded to sketchfab, it’s completely viewable and the environment and model looks overal what the intention was for the goal of the project. The only issue is having to pay for HDRI changes so a solid colour was used to replicate the idea of the ocean.

Overall the project expresses the desire of the goal of creating a character animation and design inspired by the codex, next time I’d like to create something further out of the style that’s usually used in these projects and push harder on a tone for the characters created.