I was very positive going into this character design, but I came through a lot of problems mainly at the end. It was very disappointing to the reach a point of a no return and have such a high polygon count, and not being able to rig the character and pose it. But I’m still learning, and that is something I definitely will be keeping in mind for the future models to come. though generally speaking this assignment was a very interesting experience to explore someone else’s style as a way to introduce ourselves to modelling humans, humanoid characters. Gennady Tartakovsky style has influenced me in my personal drawings with the simplicity that is very expressive of the characters emotion as well as being a style that simple to animate for 2D and a good start to get into modelling people in 3D. Lastly, I do find it quite disappointing to have not reached the end result with a fully rig character on sketchfab but I’m bound to make mistakes a learn from them, I know very well the next models I will do better, but I’m glad to at least feel a bet more comfortable with substance painter .
Month: December 2023
Assignement 2: final model references
Here are some references I used while modelling :
My model:
Classwork:
During a few of our classes we got the chance to learn how to use different methods to help us with our final model:
using the sculpt tool for the first time:
A second sculpting attempt of a head:
Learning topology:
adding details and baking the normal maps :
rigging a ready model
Assignement 2: sculpting attempts
At this stage I was trying to not overly detail my character so there was some getting used to
This attempt was more satisfying although not my final choice.
Reflection on the module:
For this module I was afraid and lacked confidence specially in animating, given I have little to no experience in animation apart from failed attempts I did a long time ago. During the past weeks, Something I learned and felt the most confident in was using shape study to create characters with a body that communicates their personality and has and a recognisable silhouette which is something I even utilise in the other module and started practicing it on personal drawings. As well as using the rule of thirds, different camera shots and angles as much as I can to help display things nicely. However, I would like to practise more what we learned the last few weeks given it’s the part I felt I knew the least and barely had a few class exercises as experience, while what we had done previously was closer to what I knew so far. For animation, what I had to change would be my comfort style, which is far too realistic and detail oriented. I’ve adapted a simpler style to make it easier to animate specially in groupwork as well as trying my best to match it to the other group members style to have a nicer flow throughout the animation. When it comes to teamwork, I feel comfortable enough. Though because it’s different from the groupwork I’ve done so far given this is more creative, there was some adapting that needed to be done, such as creating a character everyone would be able to draw, visualising the ideas I thought of to easily share them with my group, similarly to that, visualise the combination of my ideas and other members ideas. I did find myself struggling at times, specially now when it comes to animating, mainly not looking at references out of fear from all the times I did, and the result didn’t look right, and overly doubting if I am able to do it which leads to art block. But I would not want to start over with what I have now as advantage. I feel it is necessary to go through my mistakes and little struggles to better understand what I am doing wrong and specially how to fix it, for example, not using references really shows, the movement the character is doing looks off and isn’t something you can easily understand without taking a step back and looking at references of someone doing the movement. In short, I really need to work on taking a step back to ask myself if it looks right or even if the concept itself can be done, I need to use references and definitely not doubt myself as much as I do to be able to practice more and familiarise myself with new programs, how they function and specially how to take advantage of them in my animation and utilise what I have learned so far to see what I can fix rather than having an over all negative view of my work.
Week 11: Classwork, Presentation
Our group presentation was relatively rough, we didn’t talk much but our work was good so far. It was interesting to see how far each group has gotten to and keep in mind some of the remarks done by the lecturers, even if not directed at our work but that could help us during in our animation process.
here is our presentation:
Week 10: Homework, animation
At this stage we are focusing on the animation, still at a grey scale stage:
here is what I’ve done so far, certain elements from the animatic were abandoned to help the animation become smoother and again somethings would be too hard to animate.
What didn’t work:
- zooming into her face before we see the house.
- the black screens between the heart beat and the shots of her .
- looking at a heart beat animation to animate the heart.
- instead of her walking towards us, because that is too hard to animate, have a side. view of here walking from left to right (looking at Richard Williams walk cycle).
here is a coloured version to see what it will look like and how I would want to do the background:
here is a guide to help me under stand better how a heart beats with an attempt that still needs perfecting:
Week 10: Classwork, Line clean up and colouring
Task:
We had to clean up a flour sack animation and colour it using krita, it introduced us to some tools and their uses, here is the result:
We also had to post our animatics sticked together to get a first glance at what the animation will look like as well as receive feedback from our lecturer:
After the feedback:
certain things needed some altering or simply weren’t needed because they either prolonged the animation, confused the viewer or could be too difficult to animate. Here is the animatic after the changes.
what didn’t work:
- the shot from above at the start would be too hard to animate.
- the turn around after the zoom in was not necessary.
- the turn around with her holding onto her heart was making the animation too long.
- zooming out from her eyes and then watching her run away was also unnecessary and slightly confusing.
Here is my final animatic:
Here is the groups final animatic:
week 9: Homework, animatic
having a clear idea of what I’m meant to portray in my scene (6) I drew a clearer storyboard and started with the animatic :
This is a cleaner version done digitally:
This is the animatic:
Week 9: Classwork, animatic intro
Task:
Here again similarly when it comes to animatic we follow along the basics of the storyboard but in this case we also keep in mind the transition from left to right ( as we do when reading). and to make it easier on ourselves to always remember neutral shots to help when switching angles, so it stays cohesive.
animatic 1:
animatic 2:
Groupwork
While back in our groups we wanted to clearly explain what each individual was tasked to do in their animatic. We sketched out little vignettes with 3 drawings that represent the 3 major actions of the scene as well as a description in the back.
Scene 1
scene 2
scene 3
scene 4 (darker picture to make it as visible as possible)
scene 5 (darker picture to make it as visible as possible)
scene 6 (my scene)
Scene 7 (possibly a last extra shot similar to the third one)
