Client Project: Gavin's Eyes

How would you like a nice new pair of eyes?
Painting simple eyes in Autodesk Mudbox

Research Project: Artifact 4

For my fourth Artifact I was originally going to repeat my previous artifacts investigating environment rather than character, when I had a thought: how do we judge that a 3D object is good or not? The most obvious way is to judge in on how close to the real life object its representing (assuming its representing a real life object such as a pipe or a wheel) but a lot of the time the result is subjective, just depending on ones opinion on whether it is an accurate representation or not.

So for this artifact I decided to examine how close an object made out of straight edge polygons can get to a true to life circular object using objective mathematical formulas.

Client Project: Painting in Mudbox

Gavin's Head painted using Adobe Mudbox

Client Project: Environment Modeling

Client Project: Environment Designs

Client Project: Environment Art

Concept piece for Gavin's house, including possible structure and textures and showing the aesthetic feel of the animation.

Research Project: Artifact 3

Take a look around my two high poly models

WolfBunny from blueryuk on Sketchfab.

KB base 2 from blueryuk on Sketchfab.

Client Project: Story Images

Some images from the storyboard fully drawn and painted

Client Project: Storyboards

The first few panels of our storyboard (the text needs to be updated)

Client Project: Final Character Drawings

Gavin

Robert

Doris

Jenny

Client Project: New character designs

Since I uploaded the old character designs, the whole idea for our client project was changed. The main character design needed changing as the old one was considered 'too old' to be seen as relateable to the target audience and had the problem that his design was 'inherently grumpy' meaning that it would be difficult to show that character expressing any emotion other than negative ones, which didn't fit our story, where the character needed to show a transformation to happiness and other emotions such as the wonder of discovery etc.

Therefor here are the new designs for out main character, now named 'Gavin', he is much younger, is a simple and basic design so the audience can project themselves onto the character, and relate better to him, and has a taller thinner more 'noodley' design, thus making him easier to model and animate.

'Gavin 1'

'Gavin 2'

He is drawn both with and without glasses because when he travels through to the world with glass, he finds a pair of glasses that help him see the world more clearly.

We also added more characters to the story that the main character would encounter on his journey, each of the characters needed to be dynamic in the rage of expressions they could project as they would be shown as angry grumpy cold and resentful in the world without glass, and as being happy cheerful at ease and jolly in the world with glass as their problems have been fixed with the use of a glass product.

The first one was a angry middle aged man, who is shown to be struggling to write a letter in the world without glass, and then in the world with glass he would be writing the same letter using a laptop:

'Robert'

The second was an old lady who ran a flower shop, her problem was that because she had no windows, all her flowers were dead. She also needed glasses and could not read the bank notes handed to her by Gavin.

'Doris'

The third character was a young woman Gavin bumps into as he leaves the flower shop, her problem is that she is carrying a large stack of documents and books and as Gavin bumps into her, they fall all over the place. In the world with glass she is shown using a tablet to access all her books and documents.

'Jenny'

Client Project: Character Designs

Some of my initial character sketches for my client project, and how the character changed according to feedback.

My first design for the character

''Give him hair and have him wearing a shirt and tie''

''Make his eyes wider and his nose smaller''

''Have a narrower gap between his legs''

''Give him more of a neck''

''Make him more slender''

''Give him a smaller jaw/ Make it more rounded''

 After many changes, some kept and some discarded, this was the final design choice:

Final design for character in outfit 1

Final design for character in outfit 2

Research Project: Artifact 1,2&3 Video

Research Project: Artifact 1 Changes

So after talking with my tutor we decided that my attempt to investigate the differences in high and low poly modeling would be more successful if the models I used were based on the same creature. so I have created complex and simple variations of the same character.


So here is the original Kittybunny:

And here is his complex form, Wolfbunny:

Client Project: Evaluation

The objective of this project was to create an animation piece for The Nottingham Young Creative Awards, we would have to identify what our Target Audience would be and to ensure that the project would be appealing to this audience. The Nottingham Young Creative Awards Brief stated that we would have to create project themed Nottingham Loves… within one of the ten categories, of which I personally chose Animation and Digital Media.

For my project I felt that I had very good knowledge of Nottingham’s Nature and Wildlife, so this would obviously be the best subject to base my project on, I decided that my Target Audience would be children ages 3 to 7 and their parents, the reason I decided this was because I believe it would be nice to pass some of my personal knowledge on to the younger generations within Nottingham. Another reason for me choosing children as my Target Audience was that I have noticed that there are little informative documents that explain what is on offer in the area for children to do, this project would obviously give Nottingham citizens and tourists an understanding of what is available to them.

I believe that this design would probably work best being displayed on the information screens at Nottingham’s various transport stops, this is because the most direct and simple route into Nottingham City centre is by using is various transport methods, with the high traffic use of these methods of transport there is a higher chance of people seeing the design.

To ensure that my Target Audience would be interested in my project, I would have to ensure that my design was bright, eye catching and most of all informative. I played with many different ideas to determine what would be the best design, eventually I came to the conclusion that the design that would appeal most to the Target Audience was the 2D Pin Puppet design.

When structuring my project I first had to create a basic story board so that I could ensure that the project flowed smoothly, this was done by gathering all the facts which I wished to include within the design, and then creating a scene to fit each set of facts.

Once I had decided on all the scenes which would be included I then needed to create a background for each scene, this was done using Adobe Photoshop, to ensure that each scene was relevant to Nottingham I browsed the Internet and visited places around Nottingham to give me inspiration for my background designs. With the backgrounds complete, I then needed to create the Characters that would go in each scene, the Characters would be 2D Pin Puppets. Using Adobe Photoshop again I created each movement piece for each character, saving them individually, once all the pieces were designed I then imported them into one file where I was able to pin each segment together allowing me to move each piece individually.

After all the Characters and Backgrounds were completed I then imported them into Adobe Premier Pro, this is where I would create the complete scene. With each Character I had to create the Animation of their walk cycle or the motion they would be doing in that scene. This was done using the Puppet Pin Tool, this would allow me to use the characters I had created and animate each piece quite simply.

With all the Scenes now animated I needed to ensure that the sounds fitted correctly. For each scene I required a different ambient soundtrack and also the sounds that each of the characters would be making, these sounds clips were collected from a website called sounddogs.com. Using the sound manipulation software within Adobe Premier Pro, I was able to blend all the character sounds quite nicely and to ensure that each scene would blend with the previous and following scene without any overlap.

Overall I feel that my design worked rather well, with the sounds and visual blending quite nicely, I believe it was successful in its goal to deliver detailed and relevant information about the Nature and Wildlife in and around Nottingham to the Target Audience.

In future I will ensure that any text that is in a project does not overlap any of the animations that are taking place, I also feel that I could improve my time management skills, by setting myself miniature deadlines, this is to ensure that certain tasks are complete by a certain time, allowing me to focus all my efforts on the task at hand, and also giving myself a few completely empty days at the end of the project to ensure that if there are any modifications and improvements that could be made, I could make them quite simply. I feel that I could have also added some more sounds to the characters, this is because at points the backing soundtrack that runs throughout the entire design sometimes partially drowns out the ambient sound for some scenes.

Redbubble

So I finally got round to setting up my RedBubble page. Ever wanted one of my drawings on a shirt or as an iPod/iPhone case? Now you can!
Also, let me know if there are any pieces of work you would like to see that I haven't put up yet.


http://www.redbubble.com/people/blueryuk/portfolio

Research Project: Beginning Modeling

I have started the modeling process for my simplistic character.

I am not yet finished as this model will need more work before I can begin experimenting with textures and bump mapping, but this is only my work so far.