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!
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.
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.
