Sorry about the previous post guys. I thought the next quarter of AM started on Jan 8th and I just found out that I was correct. I guess what I saw on the website's calendar was a mistake. I'm glad I have another week to work on my 2d blocking. Now I'll be able to go through the short and breakdown the motion in the shots even more.
AnimationMentor's class 6 starts this coming Sunday! I've blocked in about 90% of my short so far, yet I still feel like I'm behind. I have one and a half days left to do the rest...let the crunch time begin!
Happy Holidays everyone!
A special thank you goes out to my friend Amrit, who told me a key piece of info this morning which has helped my understanding of how to use rigs with an ik spine immensely! That was an excellent spontaneous Christmas present, as it's allowed me to realize just how flexible Twitch's rig is. Thanks a ton Amrit!
I hope everyone has a very wonderful Christmas(or whatever holiday you celebrate) and New Year!
Hey everyone. I'm working on blocking out my short now that class 5 is over. I've always wanted to block things in using the grease pencil script but I've never really gotten a chance to. Because of that, I've decided to do my first pass of blocking for my short in 2d using the script. So far I really like the results. It's much easier to edit the timing since all I have to do is move the drawing up or down the time slider. It's also faster since I can quickly draw in a rough pose and move to the next one. It just sucks that my 3d Twitch isn't nearly as appealing as his 2d counterpart. I'd love to do the entire short in 2d, but I still don't have the resources for that. Anyway, here's a sneak peek at one of the shorts I'm working on:
Sneak Peek
Please people, can we try to use a little common sense while playing video games? None of the things on the following site should have happened...
http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/index.php?p=1
I've finally "finished" creating thumbnails for my short! I say "finished" because I need to shoot video reference for some parts and I'll draw thumbnails from that. I'm done for the most part though. Here's a look at what I've done, the pages aren't in any particular order. They may not even make sense, lol, I just thought I'd share my process with you guys anyway.
Class 5 is over already! I can't believe it, the time has really sped by! Hopefully things wont go so quickly during class 6, lol. I may not be able to finish animating my short if they do. Since this is the last week of class 5 it's only right for me to show you guys my final layout. Twitch's body rig was completed earlier today so I'll have to go in and make sure I'm not messing up his geometry with my poses. After that, it's on to animation! I'll need to shoot some video reference to help me with Taylor getting off of his bed and a few other areas. I've already found reference and thumbnailed some of the shots. Hopefully I'll be able to do that for the whole short in a couple of weeks. I really enjoy using the grease pencil script and would like to block in my animation with that before touching the 3d characters. It's much faster than posing them out and it allows me to adjust my timing quickly. Plus it'll be great to do some 2d work, despite the fact that it wont be seen in the final. Ok, here's my layout:
Final Layout
If someone could tell me how to properly compress sound files I would really appreciate it. The soundtrack has added an additional 11MBs to the video file...
Here's a page of sketches that I did why waiting for my video to finish exporting. I experimented with creating dragons with a large lower jaw. I really like how they turned out and will have to use that technique again. I've always had problem with drawing mean looking characters since my drawings always tend to be cute. You can see how the large jaw seems to have helped with that if you look at the characters at the bottom. My favorite ones are the dragon in the middle and the one to his upper left. The dragon at the top is one of my typical white furry dragons. They're distinguished by the slip of their snouts, their dreadlocks and their longer fur. I included him so I could compare him to the dragon in the middle. I believe I'll use the large jaw as a distinguishing feature of my traditional dragons.
I just finished watching a news item on the AM site in which Bobby Beck spoke about sharing AM property (rigs, syllabus, lectures etc.) and it was very disappointing. Bobby should not have had to make that news video. Everyone at AM knows not to share the school's content so it's a shame that some people aren't respecting the school's rules. That's really not cool. If I were in charge I'd expel the student(s) who were leaking AM content immediately. Hopefully action is taking place against the person/people responsible for that. AnimationMentor is an excellent school and I can't imagine why anyone would want to hurt them in any way. I am really disappointed that any of my peers would do such a thing.
AM's Winter Student Showcase is coming! They've posted a news item asking for submissions. I'm so excited! I'm going to submit both of my dialogue tests, my 2d shot, and my side step. Hopefully one of those will make the cut! :D
After talking to one of my friends who knows a lot more about little kids than I do, I've decided to change Taylor's age from seven to nine. I was told that at nine Taylor would be old enough to stick to his goal of scaring his sister while still being childish enough to be seen as the mischievous little brother. I'm glad thats the case since the change is making things easier as far as planning how he will act. I've also decided to make Taylor a little silly so he can get away with broader actions.
I'm planning Taylor's acting in preparation for thumbnailing and I've run into a problem. I want Taylor to be a happy and energetic child so he can contrast with how shy and reserved Twitch is. I've changed my acting choices for Taylor to support that, he'll be making faces with Twitch, he'll jump off of his bed in the beginning, etc. The problem is I'm having trouble coming up with how he'll do those things. I've never really liked little children and have avoided having to interact with them as much as possible. As a result, I don't have a library of childish actions to draw from. I'm looking online at video clips of children doing various things but I'm having a hard time deciding what to use. One reason I think I'm having trouble is it's difficult for me to gauge how old the kids in the videos are. I can tell the difference between a baby/toddler and an older child, but I don't remember what a seven year old looks like. That's bad since I've found a few clips that I like but I can't really tell if a specific action/gesture is too juvenile for a seven year old or not. I dont even know if seven is too old for Taylor. Maybe five's a better age? I just want him to be a little kid but old enough to be able to stay on track with helping Twitch/pursuing his goal of scaring his sister.
I wish I had access to a little boy around Taylor's age. Then I could just ask him to jump off my bed, watch his favorite movie, jump out of the closet, and make faces in a mirror, lol pretty much everything I need Taylor to do in my short. Then I'd be able to take note of how the child does those things and use them to make Taylor's performance more sincere. Sadly, that isn't really an option since I don't know any little children or know anyone with some. For now I'll have to settle with asking my guy friends how they would have done those things when they were that age. If I'm lucky, I might be able to get one of them to actually perform some of those actions.
Hey everyone. After watching this week's inspiring lecture on character design, I decided to do some animal gesture drawings. Sadly, it was about 9pm so going to the zoo wasn't an option. Instead I looked at videos from the BBC Motion Gallery and drew from them. The first page features two tamandua, some kind of arboreal ant eater and the other two pages are just different monkeys.
Hey guys,
I haven't posted any real content in a whole, so here's look at the layout for my short. Now that I've gotten everything in 3d, this week will be spent making the changes that my mentor has been suggesting. So far he hasn't said anything about major changes. I have come up with one though. I'm going to redo the mirror shot because of the fact that having Taylor pull at Twitch's mouth has a whole lot of potential problems. That shot would be much easier in 2d. I'm also not sure if Twitch's facial setup (it's not ready yet) would even allow for that much deformation. I've decided that it would be more fun for Taylor to make faces with Twitch. I remembered that he is a seven year old boy after all. What seven year old boy wouldn't want to make weird faces, lol? Anyway, I think that will make the shot much simpler and clearer. Other than that most of the changes I'll be making mainly consist of adjusting the position of the characters in the frame. Here's what I have so far:
Full Layout
Oh, the short still has music and sound effects. I just didn't include them since they have a huge affect on the file size.
Hey everyone. Here are some thumbnails that I've drawn over the past few days. I figured it would be a good idea to get started on the thumbnailing process since that will be one less thing I'll have to do when class 6 rolls around. I've been reading posts in the forums about class 6 and it sounds like I'll need all the time I can get to animate my short. I had planned on blocking out my short over our three week winter break but I'm starting to change my mind. Since planning is of the utmost importance, I will focus on thumbnailing and shooting as much video reference as I can. That way I'll be fully prepared to start blocking once all of that is finished. Here's what I have so far:
The first two pages are thumbnails for the first scene of the short. It's not finished since they only go up to the part where Taylor wakes up and realized that Twitch is a pathetic monster. The third page is just different poses of Twitch cowering. I don't like the pose I have right now in layout where Twitch is scared by the movie he's watching.Originally he was going to hide behind a pillow/cushion but I couldn't find a 3d couch with removable cushions on it. Right now I like the very last pose the best.
The final page was how I went about trying to solve the clarity issue when Twitch has to make faces in the bathroom mirror. That layout version of that shot isn't reading properly so I've come up with a shot to put before it to show that the characters are in the bathroom and are looking in the mirror. If I go with that idea, I'll have to move Taylor to the other side of the room to avoid staging confusion. The drawings at the bottom of the page are just thumbnails for how Twitch and Taylor will jump out of the closet in the next shot.
Hey guys. I just completed layout for the second third of my short. Here's a look at the whole thing so far:
Layout
Please ignore the weird colors on Taylor in the first scene. When I added the frame counter for my mentor his adopted the shot mask's textures for some reason. The second scene portrays him accurately though. I'm not sure about the last activity that Taylor and Twitch do. They're supposed to be making faces in the bathroom mirror and the audience is looking at their reflections. I'm not sure if it's reading like that right now. I'm having trouble getting that to look right. If anyone has any ideas on how I can get it to read, please let me know.
Hey guys. I'm in the process of teaching myself how to properly draw cats. Here are last nights sketches. I really like the one of the stretching manx.
Ahhhhhhh, while everyone else is cooking, I'll be playing Twilight Princess on my grandmother's big screen tv. This will be a very happy Thanksgiving indeed. :D
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone else!
I received a copy of the new Twitch rig today and I'm super happy with it! Everything is 600x's better than my crappy old rig and it's not even done yet! I was able to start and finish a first layout pass with the new rig in just a few hours. Here's what I have so far:
Layout: First Pass
I think some of the first few shots could use a bit more time. I'll add some more key poses tomorrow and see how everything feels after that. I'm using Twitch's proxy version because the skinning isn't finished yet and of course because its faster. It sad though because I'm starting to like the proxy version better than the actual character, lol.
Oh, the reason why it's so short is because we're supposed to work on our short in thirds. This one is the first third. I've also cut out the lamp part per my mentor's suggestion. I really liked it but it made the entire short go from 56 seconds to 49 seconds. One of the upperclassmen at AM has advised us that the longer the short, the lower it's quality. After reading that I considered scrapping the entire middle of the story and going from Taylor's bedroom to him having Twitch scare his sister, lol. I decided against that since it cut out about 90% of the story's charm, not to mention most of the story itself.
OK, technically I am almost finished with this week's assignment already. Layout it supposed to be really rough as far as poses go. The point of it is to focus on staging, roughing in the main actions and shot timing. I've got the staging down and I will tweak the timing tomorrow. Since I have so much time left, I was going to include more information as far as poses go and actions go. I've already started doing that with Taylor. His poses are almost animation ready. I'd like to do that with Twitch but I cant. The rig I made for him is completely awful! The hands are extremely bad. They rotate randomly and the whole forearm area looses and gains volume. If I rotate the arm too much in any direction the hand will start flipping out. There are weighting issues all over the place too. Thankfully one of my friends has offered to fix everything and do the facial set-up also. Hopefully the body rig will be ready soon so I can spruce up Twitch's poses.
The really bad part is the rig problems are making 2d look better and better. The fact that I keep watching CalArts shorts isn't helping either, lol. I really want to do some 2d animation but I know I can't. I know I'll just get frustrated because I dont like drawing directly into the computer and know that I'd do a much better job if I could animate on paper. I hope this will go away once I get the new Twitch rig. I think all of this is because I haven't been able to animate at all during class 5 when previously a day didn't go by where I didn't animate something. Lol, I guess I'm having animation withdrawal symptoms.
The more I draw him, the more I want to animate Twitch in 2d. It makes me sad since I know I'm not nearly good enough to get the Disney internship with my 2d work. When I get back to SCAD I'll have to work on that. I can't risk the quality of my short though. To compensate, I'll just animate my shots using the grease pencil before blocking with the 3d character. I did that around this time last year with one of my shots with Ballie and liked how it turned out. We'll see, it all depends on how much time I have.
I just found one of the most inspirational blogs of all time! That would be the blog of Matt Williams. He has at least two pencil tests in every month of his blogs archive and all of them are outstanding. Looking at his work really makes me want to do some pencil tests. I'm very tempted to stop watching this week's lecture and have a go at it. Instead, I keep telling myself to remember his blog and try to bring some of the life of 2d animation into my 3d work. When I get back to SCAD I'm definitely going to have to do some 2d animation though! I wish i had my own animation disc and capture station. Right now I have a cheap light box and a scanner that takes forever to scan things. I plan on asking for those things for Christmas. We'll see what happens.
Anyway, here's a link to Matt's blog. I hope you enjoy his work as much I have!
Hand Drawn Nomad
Hey guys. Here's the final version of my story reel.
story reel
I'm finally ready to move on to layout. I started working on layout last night and was quite happy. I realised how close I finally am to the animation stage and i can't wait to get started. I really wanted to do some animation tests during class 5 but I didn't have time. There were days when I wanted to stop working on the 3d Twitch and do a "short" physical animation piece. I never gave in though, I kept telling myself I was getting everything done now so I wouldn't have to worry about that stuff when it's finally time to animate. I'm glad I that I did that because I now have Taylor's bedroom and the hallway for the end of the short finished. I've also customised Bishop to resemble Taylor. The Twitch model is finished and is being rigged by one of my friends. I turned in my story reel early and was told I could start working on layout even though we don't officially start that until 3pm today. So far everything is moving along nicely and I'm finishing things early. Hopefully this will enable me to spend more time focusing on animating when the time comes for that.
A HUGE congrats goes out to Mike Stern! This recent AM graduate recently accepted a character animator position at Dreamworks! Congrats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've decided to keep the lighting that I created yesterday morning and simply hide them. It seemed like a waste to delete them only to relight the scene later. I did some renders to see how the rest of the room looked with that lighting and am happy with the results.
Lol, Taylor is the world's neatest 7-10 year old! There isn't a single toy or piece of clothing on the floor, lol. Thats probably because his closet is completely empty. It doesn't even have the pole to hang things from. I might add some things inside of the closet later. It all depends on how it looks when both characters jump out. Anyway, every wall in his room is a different height, lol. I need to adjust that and I need to add a night sky to the outside of his window. I wanted Taylor to have horror posters on his wall. I guess I'll have to draw those, since real ones didn't match the style of his room.
I really should have gone to bed two hours ago. Instead I stayed up messing around in Maya. This is Taylor's room so far. On the other side he has two dressers, a door, and a tv. Across from him is a chair and where the closet will be. The layout is the same as the room in my storyboards, minus the fact that there's now a tv in his room. There's still quite a bit of work to do though. I need to fix his window so you see an image of the moon, I need to make some rough bed covers, and I need to make his closet. The only things I made in this scene are Taylor's hair, his lamp, his window and his pillows. I can model props fairly quickly and created those and a mirror in less than 30 minutes. Once you see the rest of his room, you'll notice that his dressers are a different style than his night stands. That's because I got the other models from turbo squid and liked that particular dresser, lol. If it looks too bad, I'll fix it.
Anyway, it's 1am and I know Taylor's pose is complete garbage. The lighting probably sucks too since I dont know how to light properly. This is basically me fooling around instead of going to bed.
Oh, I wanted Taylor's pajamas to have silly little ghosts on them but I kept getting an error whenever I hit update psd network.
Hey everyone. I've got three new items to share with you guys. The first thing is my up-dated story reel. I've adjusted the timing on some of the shots in the first half and have added quite a new new shots as well. I also have music to go with my drawings! The song is called Chansons sans paroles and its from Gerard Stamian's album Dry Fig Trees. I got it from www.magnatune.com, that website is loaded with tons of cool music. They have a wide variety of genres and they let you listen to all of the music for free!
New Story Reel
The second thing I have to post is a render of my 3d versions of Twitch. The purple one is the original and the white one is the revised version. So far everyone likes the revised version better. A tremendous thank you goes out to my friend Kris for the revised version of Twitch!!!!!!!!!! Everyone also likes Twitch's new coat. My only issue is that the white tends to take on the color of the lighting in the scene. I know that happens with all of the characters but it's not nearly as obvious. I'll ask around and see if there's a way to fix this.
Last but not least, is a drawing I did a couple of days ago. I was testing the black and white color scheme and decided to apply it to the 3d model. Sorry about the image quality. My scanner butchered it.
Justin Barret posted a link on the AM forum to the trailer for an upcoming movie the other day. I looked at it and was amazed! The trailer brought tears to my eyes, everything about it is beautiful. The best part is it's done in 2d! The animation is excellent. The characters are very appealing, their hands are simply adorable. The story seems to be filled with imagination. I seriously can not wait for this film to come out. It's filled me with inspiration and has seriously made my love of 2d animation grow. Plus, it (and the Disney movies that I've been watching recently) really makes me consider doing my short in 2d.
My Little World
I've finished the first half of my story reel. So far it's 1 minute and 3 seconds long. I'm really awful at keeping stories short. Good thing my mentor told us not to worry about the length for now.
Story Reel (h264)
Story Reel (sorenson)
I drew some more panels during last nights Q&A and during the special Cars Q&A. My reel is now 38 seconds long, LOL. I talked to my mentor about that though. He said he doesn't want us to worry about length for now. He wants to see what we want our short to be and then he'll think of how we can shorten it. That's good, since I am awful at keeping stories short and this way he'll be able to get a solid idea of what I'm trying to go for.
I didn't get many panels done yesterday. I spent the morning and early afternoon at the dentists and spent a few hours skinning my character. Here's what I have so far:
Up-dated reel
I've started working on my official storyboards today. I was able to get about 17 panels done before getting tired. I guess that's good, especially since they're much better than last weeks. I just finished timing it out and have discovered something very disappointing. The whole thing is 22 seconds and this isn't even half of my short. I'm going to have to cut everything between Twitch's scare attempt and Taylor waking up. That really sucks, since I seriously liked Twitch's thought process and how he decides to turn on the light to wake Taylor up. I think that's a much better choice than poking Taylor in the face. I've also decided that Twitch sucks at scaring because he's shy. So turning on the light was a non-confrontational way of waking the boy up. I'll just have to some more ways to show Twitch's nature as the short progresses.
Story Reel w.i.p
I got my e-critique on my final story pitch last night. My mentor said he thinks my short will be charming and cute! That's excellent since that's exactly what I wanted. He said it's going to be closer to the 60 second target length than the 30 second one. I figured as such when I started storyboarding the other day, LOL. That's fine with me though. Thankfully my schedule has worked out so that I'll be in class 6 in the winter quarter. That means I'll have a nice break between class 5 and 6 for Christmas. Rather than playing and having fun, I will be blocking out my short in advance. That way I can show up to class 6 with a fully blocked out short. That should give me an advantage time wise and should help me finish it on time.
Anyway, after viewing our lecture on storyboards I became inspired to draw. Last night I told myself my official storyboards wouldn't be lazy and ugly like the ones in my previous post. I decided to develop how Taylor (the boy) would look in my storyboards and this is what I came up with:
It's quite obvious that I hardly ever draw people and as a result clothing. In fact, clothes are one of the main reasons why I don't draw people. I suck at drawing it and coming up with designs for it. LOL, I am in no way a fashion person and it's obvious when you look at Taylor's outfit.
Hey guys. My mentor suggested that we start doing some rough storyboards to go along with our pitch for this week. So far, my story's 25 shots long, though most of them are quite short. They said not to worry about the length yet but I really hope we'll be able to condense my story into a 60 second piece. Here are my storyboards so far:
They may not make a lot of sense right now since I made them to support my pitch. Sadly, my video pitch is 50mb and is too large to post here. I think we start the official storyboards this week, so they'll start making much better sense soon.
I spent the first half of today rigging my monster character. I built his skeleton and then set it up using a Macaronikazoo script. It was extremely useful and saved me ton of time and head aches. I had to setup the ears, toes, tail, jaw, and tongue myself. It was too bad, and was much better than having to do all of it, LOL. I'm going to start working on his blendshapes later tonight. I have to watch this week's AnimationMentor lecture first though. Here's a picture of what I have so far:
Things have gone much better today as far as production on my monster goes. I made his teeth individually and was able to place them to my liking. I took a huge step after that with texturing. I have never textured a character before in my life. I didn't know how to unwrap uv's or anything of that nature. Thanks to my new book, I was able to do all of that and I now have a fully textured character. He has texture seams on the underside of his arms and tail but it's ok. I figured people wont see those parts of him enough to really notice. Like I said, I've never textured before so I think I did a good job for my first try. Here's a picture of him so far:
Okay, I just got a critique from my mentor on my final two story ideas. He really likes the monster story as opposed to the show dog idea. As usual my monster story is now pretty much nothing like my original idea. I figured it's for the best though. My mentor's a story guy so he knows what's possible in the time frame that I have to work with. Looks like I'll be working on the monster again tomorrow. The sucky thing is I'm being held up by a seemingly simple thing: teeth. I'm trying to model a set of teeth for my monster and it doesn't seem to be working. I know how I want them to look since I can draw them but I cant seem to get them right in 3d. Tomorrow I'm just going to make individual teeth and just place them in the character's mouth, rather than trying to make the teeth and gums out of one piece. Hopefully that won't take too long. I really need to start rigging him. Thankfully I have a book on modeling and rigging that finally uses a non-human cartoon character as an example. He has antennae, a tail, and everything so that's a huge plus. We'll see how far I get by the end of the week.
Hey guys. It seems like I wont be doing my monster short. My peers like my "show dog" idea much better than the monster one. They say it's much funnier and they're right. Though, I wasn't trying to make the monster one funny. Anyway, our AM short guidelines mention that funny shorts are much more likely to be passed around at studios and online so that's always a good thing. In a way I'm kind of glad. I'm behind on the monster character/rig since I don't know what I'm doing. Plus I have an animation exercise that I've been wanting to do for weeks now but couldn't because of that character. It'll to my benefit to do the exercise rather than continuing to waste my time on things I'm not even trying to get a job doing.
As far as my short goes, I have to work on how I'll sell the idea that the characters are at a dog show without showing a bunch of contestants. I'll also get started on some rough storyboard panels to help me with this week's pitch.
In other news, I just finished watching Over the Hedge and it has quickly become one of my favorite Dreamworks movies. The animation is fantastic as usual and the characters are very appealing. I really love talking animal movies and hope to work on a bunch of them in the future. In fact, watching Over the Hedge has made me want to work at Dreamworks even more!
Hey everyone, sorry about my lack of posts. I've been busy working on that character for my short as well as pitching my ideas for class. Tomorrow I have to get some teeth removed and expect to spend the rest of the week in pain. Because of that, I doubt I'll be able to get much done, let alone make blog entries. It irks me to no end when I can't be productive so I'll see what I can do. I doubt bleeding all over my computer will help though, LOL.
I just finished watching all of the backstage Disney features on the new Little Mermaid DVD...It was OUTSTANDING. I have SO much respect for all of the guys at Disney, not just the animators. I felt compelled to watch the entire thing with my head bowed reverently. LOL, since my mother was here I just did all of that in my mind. Seriously though, everyone at Disney did an amazing job on the Little Mermaid and all of the rest of the Golden Age films. It really pains me to see Disney struggling nowadays when they did so well back then. I mean, Disney was the reason I got into animation in the first place. It was and still is my dream to work there. A few months ago I imagined myself being accepted into Disney and Pixar and having to choose which one I should go to. Even though that was a make believe situation, it was still an extremely tough decision to have to make. Sure Pixar's making films with better stories and such, but Disney is the reason why I'm even trying to get into this field. I'd honestly like to work at both studios during my life, and hopefully I wont have to choose between one or the other.
Anyway, they talked about how The Little Mermaid brought life back to Disney and started the Golden Age. I think today's Disney is back in a "ditch" like they were when they did the Black Cauldron. Hopefully a new story will come along soon and revitalize the studio like the Little Mermaid did back in the 80's.
I've redesigned my monster's eyes so that I'll be able to animate them better. I've also created some ref. of mouth shapes that I'd like my character to be able to make. As usual, the 2d character is MUCH more appealing than my model. I can't really expect more than that since I've been drawing for as long as I can remember and have been modeling since a few days ago.
I spent yesterday modeling the monster's face. I'm not going to post a picture of it because its VERY ugly and looks nothing like my character. I just looked at the model with the dot eyes and found it much more appealing than the face I created yesterday. I'm going to start over and do a new face today. I learned a lot about facial modeling yesterday and will apply what I've learned to my work today. Hopefully I'll end up with a face that looks like the ones above.
So far so good. I've finished his hands, hopefully they'll work when it's time to rig and skin them. I'm really worried about how the thumb will do during that stage. Bishop's thumb can do some cool things, though there's no way I'll be able to get my character like that, LOL. I'll try it and see what I come up with. Anyway, I've added "bracelets" to his limbs where they will need to bend and then I combined all of the body parts into one mesh. Next up...The face. LOL, it's quite sad how afraid I am on doing the monster's face. There's so much that can go wrong, especially since I have even less of an idea of what I'm doing. I'm using Jason Osipa's Stop Staring book as a guide and it's pretty helpful so far. I've already run into trouble with my character's eyes. I love his "dot eyes" but I can't really do eye darts and such with them. It looks like I might have to build eye sockets, eye balls, and eyelids...
Hey guys. I'm in the process of creating a character for my AnimationMentor short. It's a cute little monster who will need to learn how to scare people. Things are going well so far...Then again I hardly know anything about character modeling. LOL, for all I know this model could end up being impossible to animate. His arms/shoulders are giving me a bit of trouble. I'm trying to get the back of the arm to melt into his back without actually creating shoulder blades, LOL. I want to keep him cartoony like my drawings. Hopefully I wont have to try to make shoulder blades, as I have no clue how to do that and will more than likely make a mess. Other than that, I like how he looks so far...
I really like the top drawing of the character with his antennae. I'm not sure if I should keep them though, they seem a little unnecessary. Originally he didn't have ears and just had the antennae, but he looked too much like a bumblebee. What do you guys think, should I add the antennae or not?
