Animation Updates

Des Animation Changes from pheonix sage on Vimeo.

Here's some of the changes I made to my initial shots- improved lighting and some improved facial expressions upon entering. I also tried to create a really smooth walk/run cycle with her. Well, back to work!

Short Text Test

Text Array from Eric Chandler on Vimeo.

Forgot to upload this one. Blame that 30 minute wait time for Vimeo uploads. I can't remember something for a whole 30 minutes! Who could?

Progress!

Thought I'd upload a bit of progress on my final project. Why is it that projects never go 100% smoothly the first time in Blender? There's always some setback or another. That's the nature of the beast, it seems. Anyway, after fixing a few unexpected and silly problems (or rather, finding other ways to do what I want), my character, codename 'Des,' is rigged and can move around and whatnot. And man, creating scenery ain't no walk in the park neither. Sheesh! Anyway, back to work for me.

Project 1 Storyboarding

Some storyboarding for my project 1 animation. I think I may have another page after this. I've decided to name the character 'Des,' just so I have something to reference her by. I should also mention that this is just a small segment of a longer narrative that I have planned out.
Anyway, not much to say! We'll see what the class has to say about it.

Character Progress

So I spent my weekend finishing up the modeling. Here is my character, completely modeled and with some basic colors. I would like to use some actual particle effects for her hair instead of these shapes, but there's not quite enough time for that. No time for materials either, I'm moving straight on to rigging and animation. Need to remove that eternally dumbfounded look from her face with some bones.

New Animation Project

Here's what I've been working on for my first animation project this term. After seeing the short film "Alma," I got kind of inspired by the simple style and clean look of the character. The characters I've made thus far have all been very complicated in certain areas, and therefore especially difficult to rig and animate. I decided to branch out a bit and create a more cartoony character, something along the lines of a Pixar character. "The Incredibles" is a good example of the style I'm aiming for. Also, since I wanted the model to animate very cleanly, I decided not to limit myself to especially low-poly modeling. This time I'm only concerning myself with making sure it will be simple in design and therefore easy to animate, and also modeled very cleanly and simply. It should look very nice when it's done!
When designing the character I made sure to keep the clothing very simple, so that the rigging process wouldn't be too complex and I can concentrate more on the animation. She's wearing one of those pilot jackets, a kind of old-timey newsboy cap, and some cargo pants. I have made some changes to her design in some sketches I did, but I couldn't get a scanner working so they aren't seen here.
As for texture, I'm thinking of going mostly with procedural materials if I can. I'm actually kind of curious if and how you can combine materials and textures in Blender, if anyone happens to be reading this and knows.
I've got some storyboarding done in my head for the actual animation. It involves finding a map, following it to a sort of temple place (Indiana Jones or Uncharted style), and probably heading into the temple... there's much more to it after that, and that's kind of a simplification of what I have in mind, but time constraints for this project should probably make keep it relatively short like that. I can add to it later. Anyway, I'll try and get some more sketch work and some storyboarding up sometime soon. Lots more modeling to do, so off I go!

Squash and Anticipation

Squash and Anticipation, Animation Principals from Eric Chandler on Vimeo.

Practicing the principals of animation. I had a bit of a disaster with accidentally editing my object instead of an explosion shape key, so... My test ball seems a bit cracked and pieced together. Remember to save backup files, people!

Gross Array Creature

Gross Array Creature from Eric Chandler on Vimeo.

You want to touch it, right? Make sure and eat a lot of food before viewing.

Collab Piece, Featuring a Snail

Here's my bit of the class collaborative project. Somewhat ironically, I made this snail very quickly. Apparently blogspot thinks I should have it twice. Oh well! It's cool if you play both at once anyway.

Motion Test

Motion Project from Eric Chandler on Vimeo.

Here's my motion test for the first day of 472. Something funky happened with the floor texture, it looks like it's moving or something, but it's really just a stationary plane. You can see the light hitting it like a regular plane. Anyway, just pay attention to the motion!

Poster

Here's a poster for my animation that I did for another class. I don't know if "The Clock Tower" is the real name or not.

Maybe!

Character Animation

Here's a youtube link in case it doesn't work on here (I've had trouble seeing other students' animations on blogspot).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-XPo6XGcTs

Here's a little test animation for the rig I've been working on. I actually trashed the rig I had been working on for a week or so with the animation book I bought and created an entirely new one following the tutorials at blendercookie.com. If anyone is wondering, don't use "Introducing Character Animation With Blender" by Tony Mullen to rig your characters. The book is already a bit out of date, has a few inconsistencies that can throw you off track, and following a video tutorial is waaay faster, easier, and the one I watched used much better rigging techniques in my opinion.

Anyway, I'm still woking on my laptop and therefore very slowly. I couldn hardly see this animation until I rendered and exported it as a movie. It's not so bad though! It still lacks a facial rig, and I'd really like to add some Softbody to the nose and ears. That's the next step, I guess, but I think I'll take a short break to do some more texturing since that's not all done. Anyway, I guess I'll stop rambling. But this is my blog, isn't it? That's what it's for.

Texture Work

Here's some of the texture work I've done on my gear guy. It's easiest to see on brighter monitors, but maybe that's indicative of a problem with the brightness of the textures. His head is still a work in progress, still needs some color tweaking and hair, I'll be sure to post that as soon as it looks passable. The base textures for everything else are looking good, but I'd like to add some gold trim to a lot of the armor still. This guy is almost certainly the most complicated to model/texture, so I always seem to try to get him out of the way first.

Fangly Monster

Whew! All character models are modeled now. There's always some little thing you can add or tweak, but now the models are basically made. Thank goodness! Now time to add materials and textures and bones and animate... lots to do!

I added the lantern to his design in the middle of modeling him. I think it gives him more personality. It's strapped on to the back of his skull, but that won't be super apparent until I texture him, I think.

Animation Scene and Storyboard

Here is the location and storyboard I've been working on for my animation.

Main Characters

Here's the progress on the two main characters for my Special Problems work. Finally some detail! They look pretty good right now, but I think some textures will really bring it all together. There's still a bit more modeling work to be done on them, but I'm pretty close to finished with them. Then it's on to the monster guy. He might not take as long since he's mostly naked.

Character Reference

So here's the progress on my Special Problems work. I was able to do some more work on the male character's face at school today (mostly adding detail and improving edge flow), and I've also done a lot of work on the scene for my animation. Unfortunately my desktop computer is having some random crashing problems (I think due to overheating, but it's yet to be determined). Anyway, that's the only computer I have that's reasonably capable of running Blender, which may slow down my progress for a bit. Anyway, I thought I would continue to use my time productively even without Blender available, so I did some sketches for the characters I want to include in my animation. It seems like a lot of work to complete in a such a short amount of time, but I'm pretty much just ignoring that! If I keep moving forward I might just get it all done! Who knows?

Nose Guy Final Mesh

All right, here's my guy with pretty much his final mesh. Mouth included. I threw on a spotted texture, I think I like it enough to move on to other projects, i.e. creating bones and whatnot. Maybe even another character!

Kooky McNoseguy

Just thought I'd upload the final (mostly) mesh for my character. All that remains is a cool mouth, and some sort of texture. I'm thinking some spots, perhaps.

Unshakable Shellmet

This is the project I worked on pretty much non-stop for the past three days. It's an item I designed for Team Fortress 2, a helmet for their chatacter, the Engineer. It's designed specifically for their art style and to the specs they asked for (less than 800 polygons).

With any luck, this item will actually end up in the game, and become a coveted and rare item sought by players everywhere. Playing for 100 hours, you will find an average of 3 random hats, from a selection of about 30. I've played for 200 hours, and I've yet to find one. I get this one if they accept it, though!

Term 2 Project Progress

Here's the progress on the projects I've been working on so far this term. At the top we have my cartoon character, sans his big ears, eyes, and the back of his head. He looks pretty good I think, even without any subsurf on him. I plan to try animating him later this term, maybe some walk cycles or even a dance if I'm feeling ambitious (which I hope is the case).

Oh, I should mention I bought a book for myself about animation in Blender. As soon as I get some time and I'm ready to start animating, I plan to dive into that book and really learn the ins and outs of animation.

The second guy is the base mesh for my Special Problems project outside this class. I plan to add some more detail to his face, and obviously give him a lot of clothing, hair, props, etcetera. He
s gonna look sweet when I'm done, just wait. I've already got a pretty cool sword for him made at home.

I've also recently become very interested in this:

http://www.teamfortress.com/contribute/

I have a pretty sweet idea for a hat to submit for this. I'm gonna make it in the next few days... I would be ecstatic if it was actually used. I'm pretty sure I can make a high quality model like this! I even read this big PDF that Valve released on the art style for the game last night.

So, on to that!