BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES: Initial Ideas and Summer Developement
Even before the end of Year 2, some initial ideas were floating around as a result of all of us talking to each other, and essentially doing mini-pitches during lunchtimes and gatherings. The ideas that came out of this were the following:
The modeling technique i chose to use was "box modeling", a technique we learned in Year 2's professional toolkit, and it involves starting of with a box, and shaping it and extruding it to form a base model. I was guided by a rough sketch i did of the front and side of the head.
After the base model was in place, i used a technique called Hypernurbs, which subdivides the mesh and smooths it out, to give the model that "disney/pixar" feel
Another thing that i used was a technique called "Subsurface Scattering", which tries to mimic the material properties of skin. At this stage the character started to look more like the disney feel that we wanted.
- A big group production about a date gone wrong through taking drugs, with a twist at the end
- A short film interviewing a Stop Motion and Computer Animated character, comparing each art form through a humorous tone.
In the group production, my role would be that of Visual Effects Supervisor/Artist. This role involves looking at the script, breaking down the visual effects and making sure they get delivered on time, working closely with the rest of the team. I also may be assisting with organizing Post Production. I'll talk more about this in a latter post.
My role in the second project will be to produce it, do the Computer Animation and writing the script.
To organise the production, i'm using Google Docs, and have created a common spreadsheet that everyone has access to, and there we have notepads, a budget sheet, character descriptions and we can add accordingly. Also the script is on a Google Doc. Lastly we're using facebook as a means to update everyone about important information, and also share ideas.
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| Some of our ideas on the google doc |
I also helped create some concept art of the two characters to get a conversation going and to help with the design:
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| Concept Sketch for Stop Motion Character along with some examples of the rig. |
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| First concept sketch of the CGI character. |
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| Second concept sketch with larger eyes, plus some facial expressions and rigging notes. |
As a team, to exaggerate the differentiations between the two mediums, we decided to have both characters have the same gender, age and ethnicity. However the appearance of each character would reflect some of the key features of each animation type. For example the stop motion character would be cute, with lots of organic curves as part of the tradition of stop motion, with a big round jaw inspired from Aardman, and the CGI guy would have smooth, polished features, almost perfect to show the perceived perfection of the medium.
Lastly i've spent allot of time testing and learning modeling, texturing, hair simulation, and doing research and development on the technology side of things to get a pipeline ready for us to use.
I then added textures, and spent a long (loooooooooong...) time on figuring out how to properly simulate the hair. This is where i'm at currently, and am still testing things out...
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