Character development

I am now putting into practice what I have learnt I feel all the tutorials have helped me to develop an idea of how to work up a basic model for a character simple character, very helpful tutorial provided by tutor matt, I still refer back to them when stuck, one thing I have to watch out for is my grouping and freezing because I made too many mistakes grouping and freezing with my practice model, this lead to certain parts of my practice model failing to function correctly. I am making sure that I get this right with this model because It will need to look clean in order be successful, can't afford to get group wrong because it is the most important part of creating a model in my and hold all information about parts of the character.    

Interm Crit

Presented our previous idea or politics in comparison to our new idea  for rivalry, we talked about why we chose politics originally and the idea of using Barak Obama and Vladimir Putin as rivals to one another. Presentation went well and we received positive feed back from the rest of our animation group who took a share and interest in our idea, the main reason for the presentation going was because our idea was not regarded as complicated but simple which was helpful feedback. Feedback received help me and my partner with research ideas and small tips on things we could add our Gym scene to make it look like a convincing Gym setup e.g. weights on the floor. This has given both me and my partner a positive out look on our project and what we will now be doing for our animation, characters and scenery.

Feedback was that our ideas was regarded as an good animation for this brief, the sounds fit well with the animation. Music could be added to give the animation a bit more life, good characters, well designed along side background, some extra effects could be added. Flickering between scenes, especially when characters are running to show the rivalry in speed and tension between the two on the treadmills. Add a few posters to Gym layout to give a Gym feeling to set up and also research into Eadweard Muybridge and his work on movement in animation.

To improve our animation we will look about adding some more props, like weights and posters to the background to make it look like a Gym. I will look about adding some music, might consider it but do not feel I need any music because there will be plenty of sounds to helps tell the story and give a feeling towards the audience and the light will be added to the scene, the lighting will only focus on the two characters on the treadmills and will be used to black out everything else in the background to focus on the characters, almost like a stage spot light. Will look into some research to understand movement and the walk cycle for animation, I will look at Eadweard Muybridge and Animation Physics for inspiration.         

      

Storyboard and scenery

Developed GYM

Reference GYM

This is Roughly how we want the scene to look, the ground is made to look minimalistic because don't need too many props because this could take long to render along with the animation itself. The Treadmills are basic, there is no reason to complicate the machines because, the animation alone is supposed to basic so we are keeping it simple, no other items will be added. More than one bike will be used to make the scene look more like a gym, only two of these bikes will be animated because two of them are being used by the characters and the others will just be props in the back ground used as a indication in the background. The Reference image was used to give me a rough idea of a layout of a gym because I had not had a full idea of what one looks like or even the layout, because gym are varied in style and presentation.

Storyboard

This is the layout of the storyboard both simple and basic, Illustrates the story of how both characters battle it out to see who is quickest on a Treadmill. There are different views expressed in the storyboard, Panoramic, Birds eye, Side on, Frontal, zoomed in and out. The story looks very simple to animate, its all about moving the camera and adjusting the scene for each action to help build the action.          

How I want my character to look

The character I am design, I personally want to be slim and athletic, so I refered to basketball. From looking at these reference images, I am thinking of make my character look more like a basketball player because that shows that he is more of an athlete between the two character and demonstrates so with out the need of a muscular physique, this means I can keep my character simple for creation in Maya, because there are no muscle contractions I will need to animate or move when animating which means processing this character is stress free.

Tread mill videos

Our idea is to create a funny animation based on our subject of rivalry. The idea we have come with for rivalry is to have two characters one tall and thin and the other is short or fat, they are in a gym running on Treadmills against each other, the rivalry created in this scene will revloved around their competativeness over who is able to run faster on a treadmill. Me and my partner Robin went for this idea because we felt that it would be a funny everyday situation that everybody in our audinece could laugh and relate to and understand based on real life experiances or videos watched. The rivary will be demonstrated clearly throught the competition based on speed and both characters idea of proving who is the quickest on a treadmill. The characters will run side on next to each other until one falls, the main idea is to have small or fat character which is yet to be decided as the character who will run through out the small competition and not fall, instead the tall and thin character who you think would win will be the character to lose and fall face flat. This our way of making the animation funny, through the asumtion of the audeince thinking that the thin character will win, the audience will be left to anticipate what happens to the point of the thin character falling which is where the joke is because the character who is expected to win falls and the other who is regarded as the loser aka the fat or short does not.

The previous videos are hilarous compilation of Treadmill fails uploaded on youtube. The reasons for the videos being hilarious is the reason for people fall on a Treadmill and why, a lot of the time it is just stupid people practicing silly stunts  that back fire, thing that makes the videos funny is the fact they fall after they have decided to do something stupid. This is because you expect them to fall but you don't know how they are going to fall until it happens , it supprises and makes you laugh because its something that is expected to happen, but it does not happen the way you planned but ends up a different type of fall which is over exaggerated.

These videos are just to help me get an idea of how to make character fall and what ways I could exaggerate his actions before and after the fall.           

Creating controls in Maya

To day was about developing controls for our created characters in Maya. We learnt how to colour coordinate features to help identify specific movements for the characters features, I managed well with creating the controls and have managed to successfully. It went well in areas because the tutorial for the controls simple to understand but the process was long, it was explained clearly but I took a very long time to develop the controls due to my slow understanding but I created all controls and finished the model at its current stage. Although the methods of creating the controls and binding  was simple, did struggle to connect the skeleton to the controls correctly and had a few problems with grouping. I will need to watch the tutorials to get this right before designing character because this is very important asset to a character in my because it effects the characters body and its order of connects.    

Improvements for the future would be just to practice creating a character from scratch especially, creating controls because this is a lot to process so I will recap over these tutorials to help build a better and quicker understanding, I feel that I understood the method of creating controls, just did not grasp  grouping them, quick enough so I feel all this knowledge gained needs practicing, I will use the videos for future reference to ensure I don't make the same mistakes on my own character in the future.

Change of idea and characters

Original idea for my group animation was to make a short 1 minute clip on rivalry between both Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin. I had talked through the idea with my tutor where I later on realised that the idea of creating an animation featuring two globally known real life people would be hard work because it would involve a lot of work for me and both my partner robin to recreate these characters to look like the actual world leaders. To create these characters means that people will need to recognise them, if they don't then id does the animation injustice because the characters are  the main feature in the animated clip and the content is revolved around them, if they don't represent Obama and Putin, then the whole meaning is lost and no one can truly make sense of the animation for its original purpose.

The next problem to arise was that the ideas we had were too complicated to animate due to their features and the complication Maya would give if certain features were animated, this was a main factor that was highlighted because of our basic understanding with Maya, we were mainly told to stay away from complicated designs in Maya because these ideas may take a long time to develop because of the amount of detail.

We have now, developed a new concept involving treadmills as something comical to our audiences, the idea is to have two characters running head to head increasing there speeds to demonstrates skill and stamina, to the point where they either both fall flat on their faces or one falls flat on his or her face.

Previous ideas

Previous character design

Previous designs for Obamas face

        

How 3D animation is being used

I research 3D animation many articles and found that 3D animation is very useful and has been used for multi purposes till to day, it is said that 3D was manily used for making movies, pixars Toy came out 1995 and there have been many more animated movies produced since then. 3D has come from being just a normal form for modeling and animating but has now become a useful asset in many fields of work such as; Medicine, Business and architecture.

Toy story was regared as a huge success world wide and open up possibilities for other uses of 3D, people thought if it could be used for certain things, it can be used for animating it may be able to serve other perpouses. 3D was used in 1993 on the dinosures for Jurassic Park, the computer work only provided the dinosores and and certain characters. 3D was change and braught to a whole new level because Toy Story was to have set the bar for the 3D work in the animation industry because it was created entirly by computer which is said to have been amazing personally because I think people just regarded films as just live action and real and seeing 3D animated cartoon like character later came on to change their state of mind because it was presnted as proof that filmmakers can be animators and they don't have to use a camera just to create a a great film, but the computer and 3D is a very useful tool for this purpose as well. Since then many people have taken an interest in 3D as a useful tool.

Few industries it is used in ;

• Interior designing
• Architecture
• Stage Shows
• Medicine
• Gaming 
• Business
• Filmmaking 

I personally want to use 3D aniamtion to develop enterntaining films globally for people to watch because I personally enjoying animating cartoons and little funny sketches and characters. The animating industry is growing and I think my self personally will make a great asset to that with the skills I am learning. My area of focus is 3D animation and this research has help me understand the impact 3D work has on the world to day and has made realise me learning how to animate in 3D opens the doors for me picking and route e.g. advertisment, film, Gaming and so on.

Blog viewed

 
        

Character design and understanding

The were previously educated on the subject of character design and its importance with Sara our new one of our new animation tutors that specialises in character design and has previously worked with Ardman as a character developer, we learned about the importance of what designing was and the importance the shape of the character and there looks have on people. We learned that the softer cartoons use a lot of soft and smoother shapes based on the character as do the adult cartoons, but for these they use squares and rigid shapes which gives the character more of a serious look and meaning. I was told that ideas, thumbnails, sketches are very import because they are said to help plan out an idea thoroughly so you have a clear understanding of what you would like to communicate, we have talked about needing to keep Target audience, genre, Technique and movement, this allow the artist to keep the character designs they do simple and straight forward because they only have one focus and understand what needs to be done.

I personally develop my own character using these methods of planning, I use a variety of shapes for particular characters, personally I like drawing serious characters so I tend to draw a lot odd rigid  shapes. One thing I need to do is practice human forms so I can get used to drawing the human features properly when designing my characters because I have recently gotten rusty with drawing the human form so I need the practice drawing natural bodies if I am to improve. I personally like the talk and it went well because, Sara explained things that I never considered and help widen my mind to exploring newer practitioners who possess different styles and different ways of developing characters but use the same methods of true arounds and laying out their work.

    

Maya rigging (Skeleton)

Into days lesson we have learnt about rigging and how create a skeleton for our created characters. To day has gone well, I have followed another set of tutorials provided by my tutor that talks me through the process of creating a skeleton to help move my character. I have enjoyed designing the skeleton to day, it has been very simple, I have enjoyed creating the skeleton because, the process was very simple to understand and I did not make any errors. The main reason for my enjoyment is the fact that I have learn't to add physical skeleton and I know how to do so in the future, I personally was really happy because the steps were very basic to follow on the tutorial and I manage to work through them quick and easy step by step, I think this because I have never really used the package to this level of being able to model and animate so I am fairly impressed with my self.

Personally If I was to change anything I would have designed my character better and made sure the edges and faces are in the right places this is just because my character looks a bit messy and the body is out of shape compared to the example given to me so I would like to rectify this in the future when using my to design, I would not say anything effected me inserting the skeleton because that went fine, I will just need to keep practicing to develop the skill of creating a fully rigged character.

Creation of my skeleton

                

Animation relating to idea

This an opening title for a festival called Playgrounds, this title was made in 2009. It is not fully animated but was re-developed in some aspects of Maya and a wrapped around 3D models based on actual photographs. I was mainly focuses on the tension between the two characters and their reasons for fighting, I like this animation because of its clear demonstration of rivalry and physical, the narrative is really good and the characters are presented as rough and ready based on their appearances with tattoos and vest which demonstration a sense of masculinity, this is based on the fact that the men feel that they need to show of their muscles and bodies to show their strength and physical build.

I want to produce something similar to this in the sense I want both politicians to fight one another over some thing small, this fight will be a boxing match which leads to both characters knocking each other out at the same time and the match un-resolved. This video is not animation but it involves work produced in Maya.

This is the making of the video:

https://vimeo.com/99641613

   

Character design and background

Me and my partner Robin have yet to develop a background, because have chosen to an animation of rivalry between two politicians/leaders. The scenery is always regarded as a story teller in animations, it brings for feeling and understanding through its content and colours, the environment always gives of feeling and emotion to the viewers. This is what me and my partner want to communicate, the background need to look like an area of a working politician or even have signs that people relate to politics.

A lot of colour 

Bright 

      

When looking at these pictures I feel a sense of piece, softness, love and more positive feeling this because of the setting and colours of the image the scenery is relaxing through the representation of bright coloured trees and the sky. The light is one of the main factors use to make it look lively and positive because when I look at them the change your emotion and perception of what you see through setting of the picture of what is presented and the colour and I believe this is something me and my partner need to focus on as well as the characters in order to tell a good short story.

I am still working up my character and his features for Barak Obama and my partner Robin is working on Vladimir Putin I am still to develop a face for my character, but my plan is to design a simple character because I believe my skills are not full developed in Maya and I don't want to over complicate things to make the process of modelling difficult. Before finalising anything I think I will need to confirm my ideas with my partner.

      

Uv mapping in Maya

To day I started UV mapping with my previously rigged model, which is the unwrapping of an 3D modelled objects textures, designed in Maya for the purposes of making it easier to add colour, effects or texture to give an item in Maya a polished look, the object must be unwrapped like a net for a shape and then coloured and developed further in photoshop. The steps of UV mapping my character have been very simple and straight forward to understand, especially when using the tutorial provided for me. The only problem I have had with developing my character further is his Edges, vertices and faces, there are too many elements to deal with which mean certain parts of my character are hard to maneuver or manipulate, this means that I often get confused between parts of my character because the parts I select can most of the time turn out to be the wrong selections made which leaves me pulling the wrong vertices, face or edges. I highlight this complication because this has also effected me cutting certain part of my character to UV wrapping, this is due to the miss-placing the lines on the body on my character there are too many. I have so far manage to cut and unwrap my character easier than I expected because parts of the bodies edges are fine, it is just around the arms I have made a major error on which have, I worked around this and have completed the task perfectly fine.

I the future, when creating another character I think my main focus would be to always follow guides given on character or even create symmetrical guides my self which can be followed easy. I need to keep practicing with modelling in Maya, I feel the best way to do this would be to observe and model a still object from scratch and continue to UV map and texturise.

Back of my modelled character

UV texture of my modelled character

              
I would regard my whole character as simple but, there are a few edges, vertices and faces that could be adjust through deleting, but what I failed to mention earlier on is that the complication of deleting the faces or edges would result in either a missing face leaving a hole in the character or edges missing will appear to effect the roundness of the character meaning parts will start to cave in and form a large dint. As mentioned earlier, that edges, faces and vertices will be something I will most definitely need to focus on when designing in the future, I feel my understanding will only come with practice.

The Animation Pipeline

Reading The Art of Maya has opened my eyes to the different stages of Maya and what it takes to animate. I now understand the Pipeline system of animating in 3D and when it came about, when computers were first used for 3D graphics, the stages were broken down and names Modelling, Animating, and rendering. These stages have been expanded on over time with the additions of character animation, effects, camera effects, camera movements and light tools, what I have learnt when doing general animation is that it is important to focus on all of these production stages so that the out come of your animation is positive. The animation pipeline can be summarised in seven different stages: modelling, characters, animation, materials, textures, lights, cameras, effects, rendering and composing as stated in the book The Art of Maya. When I first started using maya I realised that everything changed, there was more stages to think about and designing was more complex and harder to understand because the transition from 2D to 3D was a big difference to me way of animating with 2D all I had to focus on was designing a character, generating a idea developing a stage by stage animation for my character and scenery, then render when i was finish where as 3D focuses on modelling, characters, animation, materials, textures, lights, cameras, effects, rendering and composing. The rendering would also take long based on detail and amount of work involved in your 3D animation.

                      

The Art of Maya

Maya is a very complex package that is used widely in the animation industry, it has many features to model 3D characters, objects, scenes and many more capabilities. Personally I like this package and am hoping to learn the package in the future because of its uses and how it is know for producing the most popular animated 3D movies e.g. Toy story, enjoyed by everybody around the world. It is said that 3D Computer Graphics is a form of communication, especially animation which is also considered to be an art its self created over the last century. The introduction of 3D computer graphics over the last couple of decades has had a big impact large on the world of animation, Maya is ver complex to use, I have found using the package over the past few days, challenging due to my inexperience with the package, I have had no experience with the Maya previously and have been recently using it for a small brief given to us revolved around 3D animation, I have gradually getting used to first stages of creating a character in my with the modelling tools but I feel that I still need to learn the effects the tools create e.g. face tool and edge tool, tend to mix the two tools and end up creating edges instead of faces and face instead of edges.

Learning Maya is complicated especially when we were given the task to model a fully rigged character I had no understanding of the controls and I had no idea of how to model which mean't I failed a few times to create a basic pelvis for character which was the begging point. I was provided with my tutorials to get used to the basics of modelling and this helped me understand the tools and their functions a lot more because it directed me to the tools and made me understand the layout of the programme. Now I feel  like the programme makes  more sense and that some of the functions that I have used are simple to understand after experiencing the package in use. I stated before in order for me to improve with Maya is to investigate and experience its use through someone else understanding e.g. Magazines, video tutorials, books because these will help me build my knowledge and progress me further with understanding Maya.

From reading The Art of Maya, I now understand that Maya is not just use to animate of model but can be used to create; Games, Visual, Effects,Visual pieces for the web, Broadcasts and can be used to animate scenes in films. There are no limitation to what can be done with Maya, it is not designed for just animation.

 

                         
 

Modelling skills

To day I have continued modelling my own character in maya, I have worked on modelling the pelvis ton the head and arms of my character. This at first was hard work because I was fresh to this package and had no previous experience with the software and any of the tools, but now I understand what it takes to structure and create a character, though I would not say I am a professional with creating in Maya and I need more experience with the package. I struggle sometimes with placing polygon faces, faces are sometimes hard to manage because I insert too many edge loops which eventually causes my shapes to over complicate and deform due to multiple edges on more than one face. The images below are of my first attempt of creating a pelvis, unfortunately for me I failed to achieve a smooth shape and struggled with inserting the edges in line with the character template which resulted in me starting again from the beginning. I feel not have the experience with the package has made me take longer than I should have to create a basic clean shape so of this is due to remembering where the tools are, overtime I had to pause and remember what tool to use for specific areas and points.

Over all creating basic character has been hard but over the few days I have gotten used to finding and using the tools thanks to basic maya tutorial provided by my Tutor explaining rigging step by step. These provided videos have given mean insight into the simplicity of creating a character once I understood the tools and there uses and abilities through showing me where the tools are and what there their functions are and what they can be used for, what makes them special, why and what the disadvantages and advantages are when using them, all this information has allowed me to be decicive when using the tools and has made think carefully through understanding there use.

In order for me to improve I think that I need to practice with the package for the future and learn how to create characters  and understand the use of all the tools in Maya by finding information on the software and its capabilities through media, videos and books to help build my knowledege with Maya. I want to use this package professionally to produced my own animations, I always dream of creating an animation like Toy story, Incredibles, Monster Inca, Big Hero 6 and many more. I realise the skill to use this package will not just fall my lap, I will need to dedicate my self to learning it thuroughly by understanding Maya's capabilities and functions.                      

Idea around rivalry and politics

The developed idea is focused around Politics and rivalry, the characters my self and my partner Robin are planning to develop a fight in a scene between two politicians of the modern world to day and raise a political issue of tension between two worldwide known leaders. We have finally generated an idea that demonstrates rivalry between two characters, we chose politics because it seems to be a big issue of to day, politicians  are always joked about in the media, news papers and on TV so my self and Robin felt that it made sense to make an animation that communicates as funny, truthful and political.

I want to make Vladimir Putin and Barak Obama fight over a small issue through a boxing match, this is because I feel the story needs to be funny and makes people laugh but at the same time it communicates rival clearly relating to the brief. We chose to make the politicians box because boxing as a situation over exaggerates the scene and makes it funny based on the ridiculousness of to politicians acting unprofessional towards one another but demonstrates a clear sense of rivalry through an everyday sport such as boxing.

Ideas shared by Robin 1

Ideas shared by Robin 2

 My self and Robin have been sending messages back and forth to help one another come up with one  whole idea together we have been doing this because it helps use generate one solid idea that links to rivalry and also helps me and my partner form a solid idea we both can agree on before we meet again to discuss further characterisation. No I feel we need to focus on creating the characters around the story so that they fit with the concept and scenery.

I don't feel that this idea will present any problems for the future, the idea I think works fine and should not change in the commencing weeks because the idea has been agreed on.
                           

Inspiration around characters and ideas

Currently we have been developing an image for our characters based on their appearance, the decision is to make the characters look cubed and basic. The idea is to re-design our chosen politicians, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin as cubed characters similar to the ones found in the video game called Minecraft. This style of design has been chosen because of its simplicity, the forms are very straight forward to design and there will not been any complication making the characters when in Maya because they are made up of basic Polygons such as ; Cubes, Spheres, rectangles. This factor of designs beens that the characters will have only one form of movement similar to the function of lego characters e.g. the legs or arms not having any knee of elbow joints meaning they can only move back and forth.

Vladimir Putin and Barak Obama

I think this idea will not present any problems in the up and coming weeks, when it comes to developing character it  should be straight forward. There should be no problems if the character design and scenery is kept simple are easy to move, I should avoid putting too much detail into based on the face, skin or any where else on my characters body because this form of work is said to be really time consuming  and a high level of professionalism will be need to work up a really clean design of this quality. So we are just keeping the design simple based on our skill level with Maya, I am wanting to learn to use Maya Professional but I realise that my skills are at a very basic level and I need more practice with this package.

If the character is too complicated to work with due to movement or design, I will have to re-think the shapes the shapes used and probably look to work with more pivotable shapes that work with movement e.g. spheres. I am not entirely sure on what will happen if the design goes wrong for the future and will gradually work to make sure these key points I have personally highlighted will be noted and reflected on when making my animation.

Rough idea for characters

Lego

 

Minecraft

Keep a diary

I an currently documenting and preparing an objective list for this brief to keep me on track with my work load. This helps me to focus on my up coming tasks, blogging and idea generation because It opens my mind to newer ideas and helps me focus on specific tasks for set days, putting a line through the completed list of tasks notifies me of my progression daily. I personally set out to create a diary because I remembered that I could not keep track of all my moduals last year and used my head to remeber everything. This post releaves me of any stress and notes what needs to be done with out me hurting myself to think about it. Everything is set out and alows me to focus on each point step by step.