Completed walk cycle

At last, it is done, the walk cycle that is, I fixed the feet the best I could so they didn't look quite so flat, I made the arms seem slightly more flexible and fixed the head as it movements were abit too extreme the first time round.

I also put the colours from my model sheet onto the character, I played around with their brightness in the material editor however as they didn't look too good on the model when rendered, so they are probably not exactly the same as the model sheet.

I will play around with the morph tags on the faces and perhaps render out some facial expression movements.

In all honesty I think a full 15 second animation is not going to happen, I simply think time is not on my side, I have a ton of paperwork aswell as the finishing of this here blog and my model sheet backstory.

Making the walk cycle was actually easier than it seemed, using the timeline I was able to plot out exactly were the walk would loop round again and plot all other movements based on those of the legs and pelvic movements.

Basically the walk cycle took places over 40 Frames, the very last frame is a copy paste of the very first on every limb movement, this ensured that the loop would be perfect as the last would feed perfectly into the first again.
On every leg movement the arms would move in unison as would the neck, torso and head, for  instance on the 12th frame were the one leg would move forward the opposite arm would move back and the body would tilt to the left or right, the head would swing in the opposite direction to that of the tilting body.

Once all the movement were complete I simply set the timeline to go from 0 to 39 and I would have a perfect loop!

So here he is, I was originally going to put a sack cloth texture on, but after testing this using bump maps etc. I found I actually liked the flat colour effect better, I will still produce a few screenshots with the cloth texture however to show the results.

Some more inspirations and other stuff

I was walking back from the train station today and something totally random just popped into my head, if you've seen the animated film of the book The Phantom Tollbooth you'll recognize the Lethargians from the Doldrums.

This was totally unexpected and I don't know why those characters just popped into my head, but I think my character has at least some sort of indirect influence from them, especially in the kind of unstable and quite fluent movement.

I just really, really loved the animated film (granted I haven't read the book) especially the art style of Chuck Jones, just thought I'd voice my love for it aswell as the kind of indirect influence its had on my character.



I got bored

 Aswell as this sudden rush of nostalgia I realized since doing the vector art for the model sheets, I've really warmed to the kind of simplistic, cute characters and style of artists such as Tado.

This vector style is somethign I would like to continue into the holidays and get some more practice with, it's pretty easy to use and I love the final effect of it.

IT LIVES!

kind of.

At last I have at least a walk cycle for my little character done, my tutor set up a basic walk cycle for my character by moving the legs into the correct movements and setting them up for that it looped round seemlessly. This served as the blueprint for me to go back and move the rest of the body (torso, neck, head, arms etc.) to give the walk a bit of character and life.
I first decided to rotate the torso back and forth aswell as side to side on each step, the neck was also done in this way, swaying the same way as the torso, I set the back of the head to move from side to side and up and down also, the arms still need a bit of work doing to them to really get them to seem a little more flexible, this will probably be done by animating the shoulder poles. The feet need a little bit more work, sepcifically on the foot roll in certain places.

My tutor also put block colors on my character aswell as a background and floor just as a test to give an indication of what he will look like completed.

I'm actually pretty proud of this, I really like it!



Targets

This is really just a brief evaluation of my strengths and weaknesses over the course of this project
Strengths
- The character design: I feel as the though the designing of a character would be my strongest point, it's probably one of the things I enjoy the most and therefore end up putting quite alot of effort into making a character.

- The realisation of the character in 3D: I am quite proud of the model of the character I have produced, I think it is probably one of my strongest pieces of work to date. I think the transition is quite accurate to the original design and I have employed and learnt about a lot of new techniques within Cinema 4D

Weaknesses
- Storyboard Concepts: I feel in this project these have been my biggest weakness, although I have a more-or-less complete character background and I know exactly what his personality is, I cannot seem to think of ideas that reflect this.

- Written Work: The written work is always something I feel could be improved upon, sometimes I think I do not go far enough in-depth in the research part of the module. I think I have probably not gone far enough in to such aspects of the research such as the programs and techniques that the animators use.

- Heirachy: I had quite alot of trouble getting my head round the heirachy and it took me longer than it should have to get it sorted out, I also needed quite abit of help to overcome this part of the modelling process.

Threats
- Technically Difficult: The main threat I feel is the technical side of the module, although I feel I am learning quickly and coming to terms with the programs, I feel the level of difficulty in this module is always a challenge.

3D bound and movin'



like a boss.

 


 At last after much trial and error and a fair bit of help from my tutor, the character has been fully bound and set into it's heirachy, this means that movement is possible!
The main problem I had with this model was definitely the back of the head, this required a fair bit of weight painting until it decided to work, it's not absolutely perfect now causing the mesh to crease, although I like this, it will really match with the kind of sack-cloth texture I am going for and all the wrinkles and creases that comes with moving such a texture.
I'm still not very confident that I will be able to produce a full 15 second animation, but I will definitely be able to produce at least a walk cycle or a series of other simple movements.
Of course the character still needs color and texture, I'm hoping he will really come alive when this is added.
The shoulder poles, which governs the way the arm bends, can also be animated! This will really allow me to create the kind of tentacle movement I am after in the arms.

Last week...

This is the last week of this module...

That means all work must be complete for Friday, this includes the texturing of the character, the animation for the character, the printing of my model sheet and the completion of written work for the modules that are not yet finished... I have a lot of work to do.

Texturing

One of the most important things to do this week is to put texture and color onto my character model.

My main inspiration for the texturing on my character is the character Oogie-Boogie form the Nightmare Before Christmas, don't get me wrong, I HATE Tim Burtons films, but I just really like this character. I tried to recreate the seem work on my own character and used this as the main inspiration on him, however  giving him both a different look and significantly different personality which will hopefully shine through in his movements. I'm hoping in the texturing I can give the illusion of a rough, sack texture.

Another character I like in terms of the texture and coloring is a character called Brock O. Lee, I really like the texture and color of his body, it really shows a lot of detail and it almost looks real. I'm hoping I can achieve a high level of detail in my own texturing on my character.

Character

So far my character is going along quite well, although I am very worried about getting an animation done, if any movement at all. I have bound some parts of the character such as the nose, and it does not seem to be causing any major problems, there have been a few problems with binding the segmented parts, but these shouldn't be too difficult to fix.

The only real problem is when I bind the back of the head, when I bind it to the body and try to move it the whole body just tears.

Model Sheet

All the elevations are done, I just need to type up the backstory and put the color references on, I will also include a few facial expressions, this shouldn't take long at all.

Once all of these are complete I will upload the images of them.

Plan for the week

The main aim for this week is to get all the written components for all the modules that will be handed in next friday
Alongside this I will be attempting to complete the rig for my character, all that is left is to use inverse kinects on the head and nose and then add a master control to move the entire character.
Of course after this I will need to sort out the weight painting and texturing, hopefully I will be able to get this done over the weekend.

If I manage this then next week will simply be a case of evaluating, making the short animation and tieing together any loose ends for the modules.

3D Character

It's been a while since my last update on here, mainly due to enjoying the easter break off and the nice weather for a change.

As far as progress from my last post goes, I have not progressed as much as I would of liked to in the project, I have however made some changes to the model itself and also got a fair way through the rigging process (the arms, legs and feet being completed).

The main change to the character is the addition of a stitched seam down both sides of the character, I decided to do this to really give him more of the appearance that he's a hand-sewn piece of cloth.
I also had to weld the end of the head into a point as before it was quite square and quite noticable.

The only problem I have with the character so far is I feel he might not show enough of a zombie-like/neglected appearance, this may change when I come to apply textures etc. Looking back I would of probably changed my original character abit more too.

So far though I feel, in the technical aspect, quite proud of the way he looks, I really think I've made alot for progress since the start of the course after looking back at the quality of my old work.