Some Artwork and Photoshops for my Animation

Just some bits and pieces of work I'm going to use in my animation.

Rigging the Models

 I started rigging the models, i was worried that , because of the Turtles high polly count, that adding bones and a skin modifier may go horribly wrong, and if it had done, my back up plan was to rig him like the robots on the previous project, just using IK chains, which would have looked awful on a character that is meant to have moving skin. Luckily this wasn't the case and the rig worked for both characters, after some faffing with the envelopes.

One problem I did have with the Turtle's rig however, was that the bones in the lower arms weren't having any area of effect, and so the upper arm bone was having to take full effect over the whole arm, hands and all the fingers, this was happening on both sides.

I never figured out why this was, but I solved it by importing the character and rig into a fresh scene and centering everything on zero in the world. The rig worked fine after this.

Ninja Modeling Skills

Since my first attempt at modeling didn't go great, I started over with some new sketches  this time making sure the character was in the 'T' position.

I think this model turned out a lot better than the first one, the character is smoother and less blocky, the skin is in one piece with no gaps and the detail means you can clearly see his features. I think I might get rid if the swords though, as they look a little odd.
While making the 3D model, I added a mesh smooth to the surface, them proceeded to inadvertently collapse the smooth into the model, by the time I realized what I had done it was too late to reverse it, and I had to work with the high polly model.