Overall I don’t think I struggled too much with this submission! Due to home issues in the first few weeks I missed a lot of classes but tried my best to follow along at home. I am very rusty on body mechanics and I look forward to progressing with this as I enjoyed doing it in both 2D and 3D! With not having a screened graphics tablet I struggled far too much to try and draw cleanly in Toon boom and I am upset that I couldn’t have completed my work for my submission in it. I have been testing the water with the software (quite messily) but I understand the basic functions and how to use it so I’m not too annoyed and hope to upgrade my home graphics set up so in future I will be able to use Toon Boom without any issues.
Using Blender to animate is always filled with issues but this time around I surprisingly didn’t come across too many! I didn’t enjoy working with the Rain rig as I felt very restricted in the movements I could make her do, which is why I chose to source a Woody rig and have a go at animating a more cartoon-like movement. I really enjoyed playing around with his model and will most certainly be keeping this for future projects whether that be personal or for university!
When completing the run and jump cycle I used my run cycle I had animated in 2D (but not submitted) for the lead up and that allowed me to focus on the take off and landing of the jump. I looked at just getting the character to jump on a flat surface and then later decided to exaggerate that by adding a gap and height drop in the landing.
First render test:
(landing not complete – wanting to look at the character landing into a tumble)
Feedback from Aodhan:
Focus on exaggerating the anticipation of the jump
Exaggerate the landing
I used Procreate to animate as I didn’t have a screened graphics tablet at home and was really struggling to draw cleanly on Toon boom. I have been using Toon boom for rougher animations to try and get used to using a new software and I haven’t really found that I’ve struggled with it. It reminded me of Aftereffects and after having used AF in college it was easier to pick up Toon Boom. I would have had no issues animating in Toon Boom had I of had a screen tablet at home to allow me to make cleaner lines.
I wanted to have the character tumble when landing so I looked at a lot of parkour videos to look at how to animate this. I did struggle a little with it and if I had more time I would definitely add a lot more focus and detail to this but overall I’m fairly happy with how it turned out.
I also looked at the anticipation of the jump after Aodhan’s advice and decided to hold the frame longer and add an in-between to help with the smoothness.
References:
This was a good reference to see a big gapped jump between objects.
I was undecided whether to do my run cycle in 2D or 3D. I completed a run cycle in both, and decided to submit my 3D run cycle for my submission. Whilst having also done the run cycle in 2D I found this beneficial for applying the process when animating the 3D model. I did get feedback on my 2D run cycle from Aodhan before I decided to go with the 3D animation. I got great advice from him about mirroring the sides can make the animation have a blurred motion and to try to have slight differences when doing this. As to not waste time I didn’t get to apply this to the 2D animation but for future it is valuable knowledge that I can apply to my projects!
Feedback from Aodhan:
Look at shadowing of arm and leg position (Duplicated poses make it harder to read)
Everything else was good
3D run Cycle:
I decided to not use the rain model and sourced a Woody from Toy Story model that was fully rigged and animated this. I wanted to use this model instead as I always focus on very anatomically correct and realistic movements when animating and wanted to push myself to try something a bit more exaggerated and cartoon-like. I really enjoyed using this model and it was fun to be presented with a model and rig created by someone else and figure out the controls and how to move it properly. I did have a few issues with the rig initially but after having a chat with Rachel in class, she showed me how to simplify it down and use it properly and it made the animation process a lot easier and quicker!
Test Render:
Feedback from Rachel:
Re-do the run and look at the effect of gravity more on the leg movements
Now that the IK is off and I have access to the controllers for the individual parts of the arms it should be easier to move them without them distorting
Quaternion was turned on – Rachel advised that I check this in future and change it to XYZ Euler.
IK controllers were hidden so Rachel helped me look for them and get them turned on – this made re-doing the animation was SO much easier! I had struggled with the arms and movement quite badly in my first test run of animating Woody.
I rendered out the 32 frame animation at 24fps and added it into to loop and lengthen it.
I had to render this out quite a few times as there was always a slight glanky movement that I wanted to correct. Even with the final render there’s a part when his hand moves down and it flaps a bit. I looked over the blender file so many times and it looked fine in Blender but when rendered out it was noticeable.
A bad test render:
Final render:
References:
Woody Blender Model sourced from – https://app.gumroad.com/d/354283c2d8ca409a9a2cc7b5e8fd14fd
Run reference:
ToyStory 3 game for PS3 – looked at gameplay on YouTube to see reference of movements:
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I used videos like this for referencing a more exaggerated run and looked into the positioning of the arms.
I found this video very helpful with looking at a fast paced leg movement and was able to use this as a great reference towards animating the legs on Woody.
For reference for this I looked a lot at the reference videos posted on Blackboard and also watched gameplay/film clips of Toy Story to see how Woody moves. I wanted to focus on a swaying walk like a cowboy so also watched videos of cowboys walking to refer back to.
Animated the Contact, down, pass and up poses every 4 frames to keep the tempo lower.
Focused on the body swaying and side to side motion
I used a software called Movavi Video Editor to stitch the render together. (Couldn’t get Adobe suite to work at home). This software was easy to use and because the render was cycled, it was easy to duplicate the video and create a longer walk cycle sequence.
This was my final video. I noticed that I had lost the texture of the hat (this flagged when saving in blender as it is likely an older blender version model) but I don’t think this is too noticeable thankfully!
Sources:
I looked at references to his movements from movie clips. I wanted to see how his body swayed and his arms would react to that.
I used this Youtube video as main reference to my walk.
I also used this reference to see how walking with a hand on the hip would work and looked at the placement of the stationary hand and how it moved with the body.
When in college we had to do a walk cycle animation as one of our first projects so I had prior experience in completing this. I have become slightly rusty and lacked the fundamentals of a basic walk cycle and after having a chat with Aodhan decided to re-draw it.
Feedback from Aodhan:
It lacks the bounce fluidity when contact is made with the ground
Advised it is probably easier to re-do the walk cycle to add this in (Definitely agree to this)
I decided to redraw my walk cycle as I lacked the up and down motion in my initial animation. I have a copy of Richard Williams: “The Animator’s Survival Kit” and it was refreshing to go back to this book and read through it for some valuable forgotten knowledge and tips! I didn’t want to focus too much on creating a character animation and drew it in a mannikin format to make sure I followed through with form and pose. I also used YouTube videos for references. A channel on YouTube called “Moderndayjames” also has a video up that I found so useful and full of helpful tips!
I read through this and made sure I had it open beside me when drawing out my animation.
Rough sketched animation – more cartoony to look at leg form and the up/down motion.
I animated on 8 frames and and then rendered it out at 12fps on 2s!
After going back and re-doing this animation I focused a lot on references to make sure I got the up/down motion.
I also had a quick sketch through of adding a bag to a character just to focus on the movement of a prop.
References:
Richard Williams: “The Animator’s Survival Kit”
I looked at a lot of hiking videos to reference the movement of a backpack while walking.
This year I have learnt so much, transitioning from using Maya to using Blender was actually a lot more difficult than I had imagined and over the summer I will continue to work on little blender projects to try and get my confidence up! I’ve found the course difficult at times as I feel certain tasks aren’t communicated clearly and I get very confused on how to proceed with the task. I found working in groups a bit challenging as some classmates would pull their weight more than others. I would have liked a bit more support at the start on how to lay out the blogs properly as its something that I’m never sure how much or little information is actually required, and it wasn’t until speaking with Henry the day before this hand in that we got a bit more clarity on what is being looked at within the blogs. The class workshops were easy enough but I feel maybe slightly rushed at times, as we wouldn’t have certain things finished by the end of the class and then have our assignment to work to do at home and also finishing any class workshop content. I feel like the workshops were easy to understand but hard to apply to assignment work as the workshops would be a bit more problematic free, unlike the issues that arose with personal work for assignments! Possibly would have liked to have workshops were models had issues and we had to look at ways to fix them so it would help develop our problem solving skills. Overall, University has been an experience and a little more challenging than I thought but I’ve had a blast and I’m looking forward to seeing what next year has in store!
Our assignment for Animated Narratives was to create a 3D animation to convey a story of “journey”. We were assigned into groups and quickly got to work brainstorming ideas. The only criteria we had was the animation was to last 30-60 seconds and any characters were allowed arms – but no legs!
Research:
Initially our group threw out the obvious ideas i.e. Ghosts, bats, food etc. Sasha in the group suggested a dark twist on a fairy-tale, with reference to the Brothers Grimm. It seemed like the obvious fairy-tale to use, but we quickly realised that Little Red Riding Hood was perfect for us to adapt into our own styles and portray a “journey” through the story.
While I was off from class one week, the group met up and decided to go with puppet characters with a stage booth scene. When this was pitched to me, I loved the idea and was definitely all for it! We later met on a Discord call to discuss the style and all agreed to theme the characters based off woodland creatures and that we would trial both hand puppets, string puppets and a mixture of the two in our designs.
By having the four characters it allowed our group to create a character each as we had the Young Rabbit, The Motherly Squirrel, The Elderly Hedgehog and the Villainous Fox!
When we refined the story so started to look at character designs:
Pre-Production:
I created a mood board based off the ideas that everyone had pitched for character styles when we had a basic storyline idea.
Storyboard:
We made the story about a young rabbit going into the woods to collect carrots, she comes across a motherly (later decided pregnant) squirrel who warns the young rabbit it isn’t safe in the woods and to go home, the young rabbit doesn’t listen and carries on. Further into the woods the young rabbit meets an elderly hedgehog, who once again warns the rabbit not to continue but the young rabbit doesn’t listen and carries on once again. The young rabbit gets deeper into the woods and the day begins to turn to night, the rabbit realises she is lost… then out of the shadows behind her a fox jumps out and eats her!
My Design:
Character Designs:
In class we grouped together and decided what character we wanted to go with – we went with a wheel generator online to assign them! I got the rabbit – so got to work on sketching out some concepts.
Rough:
Original Final:
Refined design after not liking the realism look:
Based the rabbits design off the functionality of it being a hand puppet, so took a photo of my hand and used that as a base for the design.
Production:
Modelling:
My first trial model:
Didn’t like the style
Felt the head focused too much on realistic anatomy
Ears too thin
Definitely too low poly
I followed a YouTube tutorial on how to do buttons, but after talking with Mike in class and asking how to clean up the topology, he showed me a much easier way to create them with a neat topology.
One of my biggest flaws in animation is that I focus a lot on anatomically correct shapes and realism. So I started to think of the rabbits head shape as more cartoon-like with chubby cheeks and a rounder face – to represent the young rabbits youth and innocence.
UV Mapping:
As the model wasn’t too complex I found the UV mapping process easy enough, which is the part I usually struggle with the most!
Texturing:
Wouldn’t be making a 3D model without some issues. After texturing in Substance….it crashed! I lost all that work.. so I had to go back and try again and when importing my UV map over to substance this time, I kept running across an issue where only some of the map was coming across. I soon realised that I had done some changes in Blender on an older file and the model still had my rough material colours on it. So, I was able to delete these off and make the model all one material and this resolved the issue id been having.
I also had an issue when I was pulling the model over to Substance that it wasn’t bringing over the button eyes correctly. So in blender I separated these and moved them to the side of the model, joined them back to the main model and the exported the UV map over to Substance. Once everything was textured and back onto Blender I then grabbed the buttons again, separated them and moved them back into position on the rabbits face.
When this was presented to the class I got feedback that the concept design was preferred so I went back and tweaked these accordingly. I also had criticism about the square look on the ears which I rectified.
I was also tasked with modelling the stage prop, this is a rough design below:
Adjusting the Rabbit Textures:
This is the final texture design and is more relevant to the concept design I drew initially.
Experimented with a few button colour concepts.
I struggle with linking the textures in Blender. I watched a Youtube tutorial on using an Add-on Node Wrangler, which auto links. However, I did find I had to adjust a few things.
Applying The Armature:
Experimenting with just applying Automatic Weights:
Before using damp track I animated the ears manually. I found them to be very rigid, which is why I tried damp tracking and it worked and looked a lot better!
Weight Painting:
I had a lot of issues with the model when trying to apply weight paints and get it to move correctly. I realised I had overcomplicated the model and due to having the body and clothing separate it was causing vertices to protrude through.
Unfortunately my conclusion to this was to completely redo the models body and have the clothing and body as one mesh.
Due to this I had to redo the UV map and textures.
When testing the model this time, it worked flawlessly! (with a little tweak on weight paint) I was also able to keep the head and body separate as the group want to do a headless bunny scene at the end of the animation!
Stage Booth Design:
The group had a fair idea of how it was to look so I used discord a lot to ask for opinions and what was preferred. Had a few issues with using the bevel tool as it was either creating triangles or n-gons, there was instances that were unavoidable with n-gons when using bevelling on the top signage part to create the rounded edges so I had to manually go through and try and add edges to rectify this.
I found a tutorial for modelling a trellis design while scrolling through Instagram and saved it as it was using good topology and I thought I could incorporate this to the side panelling of the stage.
I split out the sections of colour difference on the stage to stop colour bleed:
I did feel like this wasn’t the neatest UV map…but it worked!
Colour choices:
I discussed everyones opinions in Discord, tried a few different variations.
We liked the sage shade as felt it would contrast well with the red curtains and was neutral enough to not be an eye sore in the animation.
Presenting what we had the week before submission:
We hadn’t started to animate our characters yet due to appending issues but we had looked at prop movements and used basic movements for the models to compose a basic animation to present.
Focus on getting the characters animated and into the same final scene file
Look at prop timings
Look into lighting
Getting Prepared for Animation:
Had issues Appending Rabbit file into the Scene file:
Scaling wasn’t working in the scene file – I rectified this by scaling in the original file and appending over. I had to do this a few times to get it right
Had issues with the basket doing its own thing in the scene file – I experimented with both Child of constraints and joining the basket to the model. After a few adjustments I did get the Child of constraint to work in the scene file.
Headless rabbit model:
We decided last minute to have the rabbits head fall off at the bow scene.
Had a few issues working with two armatures – but for a short scene it was easily animated as two separate objects.
Had an issue with the head not maintaining its form but found it was an origins problem and easily resolved… As well as adjusting some weight painting.
When I started animating the model, I did a few test renders to see the movement speeds after being rendered, it allowed me to adjust and tweak any little flaws. I would then adjust the speeds accordingly once we started to piece the animation together as a group.
Composing the Animation:
We decided that we would have one main file with the animated props and link in our animations so we didn’t make the file too heavy. Leagh wanted to animate the rabbit interaction with her squirrel which caused a few issues when trying to compose all the rabbit sequences in one file to link over. I spent a bit of time on this to make sure that the transitions into and out of the interactions were as seamless as possible.
We used discord and went on chat and shared screens to try help each other out and get everything composed into the one file.
Sasha and I spent most of the evening talking with each other and screen sharing while getting all the files into the final scene and worked through a few issues. Sasha was brilliant the whole way through this animation for resolving issues and helping me with any I came across.
Sasha and I split the render into 4 360 frames to have initial test renders.
I then rendered out the final animation in one file.
Post Production:
We used After Effects to compose the soundtracks/effects
Had issues importing in the MKV file as was flagging an error code – Used a converted to change the MKV to MP4.
Experimented with different sounds – some worked, some didn’t! Spent an entire day sorting out the sounds. Couldn’t source a little girl humming/singing so Sasha recorded herself and made adjustments to it and it was exactly what we wanted to go with!
We also found a short video of an old film filter, we added this – changed it to an overlay and dropped the opacity.
Aoife worked on the end credits and then sent me the final render of that without sound:
Leagh worked on testing sound effects and music on the credits – however we compared 3 different versions and decided as a group to not use sound effects and just use music.
I stitched Aoife’s file into the main file and added the music track to start just before the credits appear
We let Henry listen to the full animation and he advised us on adjusting the ominous music used in the rabbit and fox scene to be louder and adding in a ripping sound effect when the rabbits head falls off.
Sasha added these in and rendered the final product out!
The Final Animation!
Reflection:
I’m very pleased with the end result – we all worked extremely hard to get it to were it is! I feel like if had we had a little more time I would have liked to look at some slight timing adjustments on the rabbits movement and how fluid the transitions are, but it’s just me being a perfectionist and trying to refine my work. Everyone else did amazing and the animation as a whole turned out far better than I could imagine! We spent a good bit of time on the sounds – which were surprisingly hard to find in a good quality! It all paid off for the end product and I honestly think my group did a fantastic job! Really enjoyed working with the group of girls I had.
For our second assignment we were tasked to research into a chosen countries history of animation.
I chose to do British animation in the hopes my group would want to look into Stop motion animation as it is an animation style that I love and have experimented with in the past and unfortunately felt this may be the only time in the course I would get to show my love for it.
Luckily I was put into a group with just two others, Kennie and Max, who both loved the idea of looking into Stop motion.
We decided to create a timeline and look at where stop motion began in the UK and what it has become today. Due to there only being three of us we split this timeline into set timeframes for each of us to look at and research. Kennie wanted to go with 1900s-1950s, I decided to go with 1950s-1990s and Max went with 1990s-Present.
I was glad to get the time period that I did due to 80s and 90s animation being a big part of my childhood, so was excited to start looking into what happened at that time.
My Research:
In class we looked at what influences we had to work with. I used my notepad and jotted down a few rough notes, which I then put into the discord for everyone. We also looked at the first idea for the design and had a rough sketch done.
I looked at a few different timeline poster:
Used a word document to write down notes against each topic:
I prepared a script from my research and timed myself reading it so make sure I was within my time limit. I felt a had a lot of points to cover in the time allowed so tried to get as much historical reference in as I could. I used this script on the day to help prompt me as I suffer badly with my anxiety so I wanted to have a cushion there for support.
Poster Design:
In class we discussed how we wanted the poster design to look and I looked into poster reference images.
We started to design a mock-up to see how it would look:
For our poster design we were really limited with our resources we had at home to create an A2 poster. When we were in class we all sat together and tried to come up with a rough idea of how we wanted the poster layout to look. Kennie said he would go into campus and create the poster based off our chosen design, and Max and myself tasked ourselves with doing artwork to put onto the poster. Max designed the custom pics of us that we used against our chosen section and I drew famous stop motion characters to use.
While Kennie was in campus, a second year looked at our initial mock up design and didn’t like it so we started to look at other alternatives. I had a Disney reference image that was diagonally split that I wanted to try so Kennie started to test out the layout of that.
We found the new layout worked well and we liked the presentation of it so started to fill it with images and the information needed.
We all spoke in our discord group and submitted what we wanted text wise to be added to our section and Kennie added it in for us.
I went into campus early on the day of the presentation and neatened up any text and the presentation layout of my section until I was happy with it.
These are the characters I drew out below:
These our the personal portrait drawings Max did for us (he later changed his initial design of his own to match the style of Kennie and myself)
Poster Final Design:
Reflection:
I really enjoyed looking at the history of British Stop Motion Animation, however did feel a little lost at times about what I should be researching into. I think looking back we probably should have looked into a studio development i.e. Aardman, and how they changed and adapted their animation through the years. I just felt we left ourselves very wide open without a more refined topic to research into. For what we produced though I am happy with it, I feel like we looked at how British stop motion went from being influenced by the war and was more rigid puppetry style, adapting into clay animation and then into the use of stop motion stylised CGI (Flushed Away). As a group we worked well together and supported each other through our Discord. I feel like the limitations of software to design the poster let us down slightly and I feel like we could have definitely developed this a bit more and made it more inviting. I liked having our own artwork as a personal touch and I definitely think it added to the presentation instead of just using source images from the internet. I found out a lot of information when looking at my selected topics, but knowing the time limit in the presentation I felt that a lot of that information was lost due to knowing I wouldn’t have the time to delve into it further.
References:
Antoons (2022). The History of British Animation. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC3zBHGx8Nc&t=1362s
A+C (2007). The History of British Animation. [Online] Available at: https://aplusc.tv/the-history-of-british-animation/#:~:text=The%20first%20British%20stop%2Dmotion,and%20perform%20a%20dance%20routine
Wikipedia Contributors (2019). Clangers. [Online] Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clangers
aardman.com. (n.d.). About Aardman. [Online] Available at: https://www.aardman.com/about/
Aardman Animations (2022). A Grand Night In: The Story of Aardman Documentary. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcMexOinKhQ.
The Boy & The Robin (Dir. Hannah O’Brien and Tamika Bramwell)
Released August 15, 2020.
For this class we were split into groups and asked to analyse an assigned short animated film. My group consisted of John, Rebecca, Ciaran, Dylan and myself. At the beginning we hadn’t planned much into how we would analyse the presentation. I initially had started to look into the lighting used, then later in discord we decided to split the presentation down and assign a topic to each individual. I chose lighting as I had already started to research into this.
Our group was given the animated short of “The Boy & The Robin”. It follows the protagonist, a young boy, and how he idolises a character from a western cartoon we see him watching in the opening scenes of the short. It constantly transitions between the real world and his imagination, and after finding a real gun that replaces that of his toy gun he initially uses, he fires it and takes the life of a little bird.
Research and Initial Analysis:
When I began analysing the animated short I watched it quite a few times and then began screenshotting each scene change and looking at how the lighting changes in each shot. This was only a quick analysis of immediate lighting changes and how it made me feel in each scene, I then used this as a reference when working on my presentation pitch to pick the key changes with the most impact.
I then began looking at more in-depth analysis and wording. I read a few articles on websites, watched a couple of YouTube videos about film analysis and read both Lighting for Animation: The art of visual storytelling and Aesthetic 3d Lighting which I found extremely helpful in my analysis and also gave me the knowledge to apply to future animations I will be creating.
My Lighting Analysis for “The Boy & The Robin”
The start of the animation starts with natural lighting with our light source coming from the sun outside and creating that slightly dim interior lighting, this creates a sense of realism and sets us into the world. When we get transitioned into the boy’s imagination, there is symbolic lighting used which is a very bright unnatural light that shifts us into a different world. In the imaginary world the lighting tone shifts from that soft natural lighting of the real world to a sepia tone which is traditionally used in western style films. This would not be a tone of lighting typically associated with the real world, and therefore when used, it gives the viewer a clear indication of the transition between worlds. We continue to see the transition of the soft natural lighting and the sepia tone lighting right until the point in which the young boy retrieves the real gun, then we are fully immersed into the sepia tone western world using the bright symbolic lighting once again.
There is a match cut scene when the gun is fired, and this also shifts the lighting suddenly from a sepia tone to a very dark contrasted scene. Scenes lit with dark shadows rarely appear happy [Landau 2014]. This sharp scene change has a massive impact on the viewer and consumes us into the reality of what has just happened. Artists and cinematographers use high-key lighting (with light shadows) to create a hopeful mood or low-key lighting (with dark shadows) to add a sense of gloom [Pramaggiore and Wallis 2005]. The contrast and shadows used in these scenes show that the protagonist’s innocence is gone, and the scene is now filled with a very cold and empty feeling which impacts the mood onto the viewer – the young boy has just taken a life.
We get a sudden transition back from this dark contrast scene to a very softly lit grave, this creates a sense of sorrow.
When the boy finds the chick in the nest and holds it in his hands, the lighting warms in saturation. We see this scene as a mixture of a soft haze natural light and a red hue, like the western scenes in the imagination. This shows a mixture between worlds, the boy no longer fantasising a western world but now consumed into a world of love and responsibility for this chick that is left hopeless due to his actions killing its mother.
Conclusion:
I love lighting and its impact on animation and film. However, I found it quite hard analysing this animated short. It has three major lighting shifts between the imaginary world – the sorrowful death – the hopeful future, but bar that I struggled to find impactful changes.
I enjoyed researching into different articles and reading a few new books! Rebecca in my group helped me source PDF files of two books which I have gained so much knowledge from.
I feel like our presentation went really well, we focused on not adding too much text to our slides and verbally scripted ourselves with the information. I do feel like I let my group down slightly as I suffer with social anxiety and on the day the nerves got the better of me and I didn’t get to say everything I wanted to. I’m very glad I got put into the group I did, they were very supportive and helpful with everything and we spent a few nights prior to the presentation on discord calls working out our pitches, which was super helpful, and we timed them so that we were not rambling and everyone got enough time to say what they needed to within the 10 minute cap!
References:
Lanier, L. (2018) Aesthetic 3d Lighting. England: Routledge.
Tanzillo, M. (2016) Lighting for Animation: The Art of Visual Storytelling. England: Routledge.
Ultimate Guide to Cinematic Lighting – Types of Lighting & Gear Explained [Shot List Ep. 12]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2nD_knsNrc&t=194s
This assignment was challenging but I enjoyed learning how to model a character. I enjoyed looking into Genndy Tartakovsky as his work was something I grew up watching. He has a very distinct and unique style, but it differs between the shows he has done and due to this I felt I struggled to stylise my own design. After researching more into Genndy I did see one thing he keeps consistent throughout, and that is big shapes and out of proportion styles. I tried to adapt my own designs to reflect this.
I found the modelling of the character body easy to do as I followed the class tutorials and tweaked them to suit the style of my character. The issues started when I began to create the clothing. The first issue I came across was that the duplicated torso I was using for the coat was also duplicating the mirror from the torso which I didn’t really want, however I was able to work with this and just continue on with the rest of the model. The next issue was when I started to seam and UV map, when selecting the edges for creating seams it was looping through a lot of the model and I didn’t want that as I was only wanting to mark seams on a selected section of a body part. My way around this was to select each edge individually, which ended up being very time consuming! Once I was happy with each components UV map, I started the process of getting each one into Substance and texturing it. I started with the moth body but found that when I had the texture applied and imported it back into blender that it was covering the whole model and not that specific part. I continued with joining all the parts together, bar the prop and importing it into Substance Painter as a whole model UV map. After texturing in Substance I baked them and found that there was an issue with overlapping vertex/facing issues on the models wings. I ended up having to message into our discord to see if I could get some assistance in resolving this and managed to get a response that was accurate and therefore allowed me to get this issue resolved. I found that the finalising stages of this model where the most challenging but it seemed to stem from a lack of knowledge in the modelling stages that caused small mistakes within the model. I feel like this all comes down to a lack of knowledge and confidence in the software and as this was my first character model it was expected for it not to go smoothly. I feel like I need to spend more time on personal projects on Blender and watch Youtube tutorials to build up my confidence in using it.
Even with all these issues I’m happy with how the model turned out even with all the flaws it may have. I feel like this has been a big learning curve for me and that as time goes on I should grasp a better understanding of the software and start to become quicker in the processes, this will mean that I don’t get as stressed up to the deadline as all these issues have delayed getting the project complete in a comfortable timeframe.
