Reflection

Time to take a step back and reflect on how things are going.

Well. So far, things are going okay. Not great, or brilliant, but okay. I've thought hard about what I want to design in terms of a character, but to be honest, I've not got that much pre-existing material in terms of research from other artists to influence my own.

Yeah, I looked at 'The Incredibles', but that's pretty much it. Due to a few things (using old laptop that can't handle anything apart from the research stuff, and sickness) I am slightly behind on schedule. I haven't even finalised my character yet.

Why? A combination of the above. Simple as that really, also, I need to look into the characteristics of the insects / creepy crawlies I'm using, what how I can use that apply them to the character of which I am creating.






Chimera:
"A chimera is an animal that has two or more different populations of genetically distinct cells that originated in different zygotes involved with sexual reproduction; if the different cells emerged from the same zygote, it is called a mosaicism."

As the quote says, it is infact, CLEARLY, DIFFERENT, cells from different species, combined.

"In biological research, chimeras are artificially produced by physically mixing cells from two different organisms. Chimeras are not hybrids, which form from the fusion of gametes from two species (like a donkey and a horse) that form a single zygote that will develop as much as it can (in this case into a live mule if the parents are jackass and mare, or a hinny if the parents are stallion and jenny); in comparison, chimeras are the physical mixing of cells from two independent zygotes: for example, one from the donkey and one from the horse. "Chimera" is a broad term and is often applied to many different types of mixing of cells from two different species."

In reference to my comment above, and as the quote says, this does NOT mean that the two animals will fuse together, merging the characteristics and physical form of the two species as one. Instead, the separate genes from the individual species both grow as much as possible how they should, as if they were a single gene.

Snake: Agile, quiet, stealthy.
Ant: Insanely strong, organized.
Spider: Venomous,6 to 8 legs.
Dragonfly: Wings! (pretty up close actually), scaled slender body, ability to fly.
Beetle: Hard shell.

I began with trying to think of what my characters face would look like, as in why would he look like what he looked like. Why did he look like the way he did? Evil? Good?

Synopsis.

AN EVIL GENIUS who has a crazy obsession with trying to fuse different genes together, to create the ultimate chimera / homunculus failed miserably for years. It wasn't until he had a son that he managed to perfect his creation. As evil geniuses do (F*cked up sh*t) he experimented on his son and successfully combined genes. Because of this, the boy has had a weird childhood, and has strange fascination with creepy crawlies as they have scales / features with he does.

But like most 9 year old boys, he is hyperactive, and still, a boy.

This guy now has a storyline. He is a creation. A hybrid of all these different insects/lizards. Why does he have a fascination with creepy crawlies? Because they have similar parts to he does, and it makes him very excited to see that. Naturally, he's just like every other child his age, except for this unique aspect. I decided that characters 4 and 6 were the ones I liked the most in terms of what I could progress with.



I then took this characters head, an started playin around with features of the face, taking parts from his 'interests' Played around with the eyes, the mouth..etc. Antennae.



Narrowed it down to these two. Next was to decide a general full body look.



Hence, I came up with this.

Please note, none of these are subject to a FINAL phase, they're just sketches with ideas, yet to be finalised. However, I think generally I'm going to play around with this figure.

Due to my previous post about how kids like to dress up as something they're not, mainly superheroes, I began to think about how I could dress my character up, starting to look at, why, would a hyperactive person interested in creepy crawlies, dress the way he does? Went along with the scientific approach..
Diving more into the actual creation. I went with the evil menacing looking approach. I felt personally that this was probably too far deep, not creative enough, and too old.
Just to compare height, landscape view.

Deciding on the height of my character. Obviously it's not going to be a full size human at the age of 9, but just to push the boundary a bit, my character is going to be 9 and 11 months! HA!. Anyway, this guy isn't going to be a standard human boy, he is going to be a mix of creepy crawlies, with human characteristics / intelligence. I want this boy to look older than he is supposed to be, but not to be mistaken for a 12-15 year old, as I think a suitable heigh of around 6 heads (body height) would convey this.
Yeah, random character. Aim? Too look as confused and messed up as possible. Why? If I was a chimera I'd look messed up and confused.

Ugh

Illness, how inconvenient. Took me off schedule for about a week. Now I've got things to catch up on, mainly character design, which begins now. ;p

Children love to dress up as things / super heroes don't they? Only, my characters costume is going to be partly real. He is going to be a hybrid.

Bugs, spiders, and snakes. Creepy Crawlies right thar! I could use these... Quite easily actually.
Insect wings are actually quite pretty close up. Still not sure on my final character design yet, but I guess you actually have to design to come to that conclusion. As I said before, It's most likely going to be a hybrid of it's interests, in the form of a human chimera, or something else. Either way, he's going to have wings, cause he's awesome, and he can fly. :D

Refined - Character design

Wings! Wings are pretty. Even though they're on GENERALLY ugly looking creatures. And as found on most characters, this is the approach that I'm going to take. Start with a human boy, make him into a sort of, cuddly fuzzy chimera.

So, besides the fact that this guy is obviously interested in creepy crawlies and is a hyperactive 9 year old, what other traits is this character going to have?

OK. It seems that I can pretty much have whatever I want, in terms of going crazy.

Wings

Antlers

Massive strength - ant characteristic

Hyperactive - random facial expression

Pipline update -

So, as I'm still waiting for my laptop after being promised it each week by the company with a delay of almost two months, I'm starting to get pretty annoyed as it is affecting my work-flow. I cannot run Maya, I cannot use my drawing tablet, as this machine is more than 8 years old. All I can pretty much do at this stage is wait, and do more research, which is going to put me behind a bit.


Research – Finished pretty much – Carried out primarily and secondary, internet, as well as going to places to cover the brief


Majority completed as of 11/11/2010 - Ongoing till machine arrives.


Initial Idea – Hyperactive young boy, particularly interested in creepy crawlies. Further research suggests that I could pretty much take this anywhere.
My initial idea in terms of personality is pretty much going to be a more random and hyperactive younger version of myself. Actual character needs to be finalised.



Character thoughts – Refine how my character is going to act, how he’s going to look, what obvious traits is he going to have besides the brief description itself.

Well, I did a couple character drawings of how this person would look (upload later) however, after a closer analysis, the character that I had come out with was in the end, just a funny looking kid. In terms of creativity, that's not that creative is it? I know, according to the schedule that I set for myself, I'm running behind, but if it means I can use the time I have now whilst I'm waiting for my laptop to arrive to refine and develop my character further, then that is something I'm going to do.

How can I actually convey hyperactivity through static poses? Amongst an obsession with creepy crawlies.



Character design – Design the actual character (drawn frontal and profile)- TBC.


Poses – Draw poses of the character – Carried out via drawing tablet. – To be completed by 13/11/2010 - Obviously missed. Problem here. I NEED to finalise my character.


Basic model - Maya

Refined Model – Maya

Rigging - Maya

Texture – Maya <- All of which given a time scale of 4 weeks. <- Start once new laptop arrives.

Lighting - Maya

Mapping - Maya

Render - Maya

Mr Harrison the snail
Suppose the worm
Ariadne the spider
Anorak the pillbug-come-woodlouse
Ladybird the ladybird
Lambeth the beetle
Ancient the caterpillar

These are all the characters in the show. So yes, although they are 'Creepy Crawlies', they've been turned into funny looking/acting characters, as this show was created with a child orientated audience in mind. Some of them have human characteristics / look like humans but have their original look. For example, a beetle with two legs + arms with no shell.

This inspired me to create a character along the lines of this, so a hyperactive boy who looks like an insect? Clothing? Or an insect that looks like a boy o_o

:o

So, doing a bit more research to help with broadening my creativity for the character design, I kind of, dug deeper into the realm of the creepy crawlies, and stumbled upon this really neat old show, lasting 10 minutes an episode, from the late 80's.

Pipeline.

Pipeline

Research – Finished pretty much – Carried out primarily and secondary, internet, as well as going to places to cover the brief

Majority completed as of 11/11/2010

Initial Idea – Hyperactive young boy, particularly interested in creepy crawlies. Part of the actual brief itself.

My initial idea in terms of personality is pretty much going to be a more random and hyperactive younger version of myself. Actual character needs to be finalised.

Completed as of 11/11/2010

Character thoughts – Refine how my character is going to act, how he’s going to look, what obvious traits is he going to have besides the brief description itself.

Character design – Design the actual character (drawn frontal and profile)

Poses – Draw poses of the character – Carried out via drawing tablet. – To be completed by 13/11/2010

Basic model - Maya

Refined Model – Maya

Rigging - Maya

Texture – Maya <- All of which given a time scale of 4 weeks.

Lighting - Maya

Mapping - Maya

Render - Maya

TO The ZOOO

Iguana shedding its skin, I just thought the texture and the look of it was quite intruiging.

We all know what these are. Would this be classified as creepy crawlies? Maybe. Either way, theyre totally disgusting.

Golden Spider - Spins a very strong, golden spider web.

Boo! Says the Locust.

If you look closely, you can actually see these guys in action. These are 'leaf cutter' ants. Cutting leafs, bringing it back to their base, and crushing it to use it as a food supply as well as building material. Quite fascinating how organized they actually are, especially for ants, but then again, ants are actually one of the most organized organisms currently living on Earth.

Ahahaha! Poor pelican. It pretty much hid its body inside itself due to the cold. It was that cold.

The Atlas moth - Around the height of a 15" laptop screen, that big. Wings looked cool, but it was ridiculously big.

Thin, frail wings, simply falling apart. The texture on the wing is actually quite amazing.

And here's where we start looking at the insect category. Beautiful butterflies. This was my first visit to the zoo, and even though I'm not a 9 year old, I was pretty excited. :D

Poor rats.

The father. Very cold, snuggling his cloth/rag/blanket type thingy, slowly rocking back and forth.

Mother gorilla, sitting in the tree, with her newborn baby girl on her stomach, just generally being motherly. Nothing animalistic about this particular approach, she was pretty much behaving like a very very hairy human being. Makes you wonder.

This guy is the king of the arena, it's actually quite funny. During a period of about five minutes, this guy did not even attempt to move. He was pretty much just laid back, and chilled. Such an awesome personality.

Birdies woo XD

Coincidentally, just like my character, this was actually my first visit to the zoo, and since I'm pretty much a hyperactive young man with an interest in creepy crawlies, and other stuff, I figured some general reactions I personally encounter / experience, I could use as a basis to transfer to my character! :D

Please watch all these very very short video documentaries. :D