The journey continues. Pt 8

Unfortunately, as you can probably see. The arms, the lower legs and feet didn't print. All in all this model was sent to print 3-4 times. The problem was that simply some parts were just too thin they broke off when they were attached to heavier parts.

Andd... the images of the printed model.

So, in conclusion.

Am I happy? No, I'm not. I've got it out the way, but it's of a poor quality in my opinion. I only hope that I won't be eternally screwed in terms of grading for it. D:

Do I feel I succeeded? No again.

Did I achieve what I wanted? No again.

Am I pissed off? Yup

Just like the image below, I posed this into a flying position (well he is a superhero wanna-be with powers of the animals / insects within him) and put him on a turntable, here!

RIGGGINNNGGG

I had no idea how to rig and from what other people was saying, it was very difficult to do accurately. To be honest I would have liked to do it myself for the experience, but due to the fact that theres no time left, it was going to have to be..

A pre made rig! Which is allowed! Yes!

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/character/c/-rapid-rig-basic-for-maya--2

Took me about 30 minutes to figure out how to use the thing, and when I did make the rig, the skeleton wasn't set right so the wrong parts were moving. AFter retrying a couple of times I made it work.

It's not a great rig, or an awesome rig, but it does the job, and my character is complete.
YEah. That's the character. Pleased? No. At least it's done...
Spec map for the reflectivity.
Displacement map. This is what's supposed to make your texturing look good, and it does. In this example though I haven't displaced it by that much, making the object levelling quite stable.

... A screenshot of dragonfly wings, with added colour. Making the texture was relatively simple actually. Photoshop + random effects = cool.
Hair and wings when textured. Looks meh. Okay, but not good or great. I'm most likely not going to finish on time due to laptop complications.. but I at least tried.

Anyway, this was done by using.... ^
Bump and spec map. Although I didn't end up using this in the end. Made it look too hair like and random, with the way that the hair was created. A flat texture for the hair at this stage seemed like a fair decision..
Right. This texture is just me drawing hair like brush strokes over the UV layouts to create the individual strands of hair. I figured this way I could keep this okay looking, but not too realistic.
This is the UV map for the hair. Automatic UV layout. I usually do it alot different but at this stage I figured this would be the quickest option. (Now I know how to UV map alot better, if given the chance I could do this alot better) This was then taken into photoshop.
Next step, was the hair. Now. For this, I was originally going to make it look ultra realistic using the paint FX. however, due to two things (the obvious one: Time. And one other - the brief. Claymation cannot use single strands for hair, as that won't look right. A combination of the two made me result to a much quicker, alternative. Block out a rough hair shape, and just texture it.

The hair was duplicated faces, and extruded.

After modelling out the other wing, (the wing that sits on top) these were duplicated -x and merged. Hence, a pair of wings!
Right. Wings. My character has wings. Specifically, dragonfly wings. So yeah, based on the image that I had drawn and used for reference, I began to create the roughly shaped wing polygon.

URRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH

-throws laptop-

The journey continues. Pt 7

At this point I just put the model next to the plane to compare. Result? Yes and no. Yes in terms of it being done, no in terms of it looking like it was hit by a car. If I had two weeks to do this again, I'd do it again, an 10x better. D:

Face. Head. Modelled, duplicated, merged. And this is your result. An oddly shaped humanish head that I'm now stuck with. Great!

About time... I finally finished the head. Even though it looks weird, and alien. After this I spent a bit of time trying to refine the shape of the head (the tutorial doesn't illustrate how to shape the head, only the face) and after nine failed attempts, this is what I settled for. 17 minutes remaining! On my god!
Quick line up just to see how this looked. Also lined up against the front view to see if any geometry needs to be scaled or raised. I assumed T pose modelling is essential for rigging.
Pretty much where I left off on the last post. This is where I'm at. Trying to follow that tutorial on youtube still and model my head. At the moment, it looks nothing like I intended it to (the face anyway) but I have to move forward as I a running out of time.

1:23 left.. I'm feeling rediculously tired... Hungry, annoyed, and saddened. Saddened that I have a model that I hate, and saddened that I won't get an A grade as a direct result of it. Heck, that grade is most likely FAR off the scale at the moment -_-

The journey continues. Pt 6

Right, anyone who has even a slight sense of anatomy will know that this is anatomically incorrect. I know it, you probably know it too. I did try to change it, but after wasting 30 minutes changing it, I preferred this, and deleted my changes -_-.

I'm raging so hard right now it's unbelievable. Maya is messing up, I'm messing up, and this work shows absolutely no reflection of what I could have got if I had more than a day to do this. Obviously that's my fault irrespective of what's been going on in my life. I know now that I'm just going to have to put my own work and interests ahead of others. It would also help if technology didn't fail on me so I wouldn't have had to leave it till this late. Especially at such a crucial time.
Moving on, carrying on the face. It seems that it's going OKAY, at this point in time.

Right. Following this tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xls25e08sSg I began to follow along and try to make the head. Although, I kinda gathered at the start of this that this was going to be a bit hard. Why? This method pretty much solely relies on the detail and accuracy of the reference images. Both of which I did not meet the criteria for. Accuracy? 70% Detail? 10%. That's as far as it goes I'm afraid. Just going to have to guesstimate. Modelling at this stage definitely isn't my thing.
I'm 30% happy with how it looks at this moment. Although, I'm losing time. There's less than 4 hours left till the deadline.. and I'm at this stage. I have to push on. I feel so tired, angry, and hungry. That coupled with my current illness is making this a thousand times more painful. ARGH.

So this is what it looks like at this stage in time.

The journey continues. Pt 5

How is it going out the moment? I'm totally knackered. Balancing this project with the other one at this stage and both unfinished is quite hard. I'm leaning towards the other as it affects other people (group), and this one only affects me.. Hopefully this won't affect me too badly..

I hope I'll be okay..

Once I had enough with that, I began to look at the bubble like extrusions on the leg. Characteristics of grasshopper legs, cockroach legs in high detail. Infact, quite a few insects / creepy crawlies share this same anatomy plan for their limbs.

Began working in more detail into the leg.

So, as you can see, that's currently how many faces the model had at this point in time. Far too much? Yes, because you know, and as I know now, you'll want to tweak it later on if it's a shoddy model early in development.
Anyways, fast-forward. I began to work some detail into the leg, as the subdivisions on the model was too low for any detail. So I worked into it, creating very subtle muscle definition on the leg. (This was a bad idea as I know now...)
Ass you can see (get it? D:) for some strange reason the face on the rear has a clearly definitive outline, how? Why? I have no idea, and no body I asked or google knew. Most likely it was probably because I didn't explain it properly.. Looks like it'll be staying like this for now, or until I can get this changed.

The journey continues. Pt 4

So here goes. A day has passed, yes, a day. Which means ULTIMATELY, I had less than a day to fully model, rig, and texture this character, as well as pose. God this is going to be such a tedious act, and since Im such a perfectionist, I know that this is going to be something I'm going to hate as I know I'm capable of alot more.

Yes! Modelled the hand and the foot. Hand is quite small though (as intended, insects have tiny hands.)
Once the thigh was done, started on the actual leg. Also created the foot. The foot needs to be slender as that the characteristic Im using. The character is also going to be quite tall for his age.

Once that part was complete, (to a basic standard of course) I then began to start the leg. Now, for this whole project, I am following the *guide* of how to start it by others, new to me. If I was to do it my way, I would of just modelled from the head down. (Little did i know that the guideline actually makes more sense in the end.)
Began by blocking out the arms, and extruding out as I went along, further extruding into the chest. The way that I'm doing this is mirrored so modelling half of the character, then mirroring the geometry so that the vertices line up, and merge, saving me from having to model the other side. Of course, this only works on objects or images that are symmetrical in shape.

First thing to do was to get the images of my front and profile picture of my character and paste it on to two separate planes, for referencing.

So here goes. A day has passed, yes, a day. Which means ULTIMATELY, I had less than a day to fully model, rig, and texture this character, as well as pose. God this is going to be such a tedious act, and since Im such a perfectionist, I know that this is going to be something I'm going to hate as I know I'm capable of alot more.

The journey continues. Pt 3

Right, time to start documenting the process, from start to finish. Two days till deadline, nothing started. Poor time management, putting the other project before this, and generally not having a working machine is what this has come to, but obviously that's my fault. -sigh-. I wish I had been smarter and actually started this project regardless of my working stances. This is definitely the absolute last time that this happens.

Am I pleased? NO

Am I ashamed? YES

Is this what I'm capable of? Fuck no.

The journey continues. Pt 2

So.. I've not updated this blog for a very long time. Indeed, a LOT has gone on. Illness, real life issues, not having a bloody machine until a week before deadline. How lovely.

Taken from my other character design. I personally felt that the character which I was designing looked far too old. Although the fact that I want to take specific attributes from the species of which my character contains makes it harder to look childlike by itself, but I think I narrowed it down enough.
Just experimenting with facial expressions for modelling purposes, I wanted to convey the characters hyperactivity and fascination through his face. Why? If not I couldnt get the point across.


The above image is the character I WAS going to decide on, but thought to myself that at this point in time, and with my limited knowledge of Maya, that it would be too long, or I'd get it done to a really really poor standard. Scorpion tail, superhero cape. Strong ant body, grasshopper / beetle legs.

So, a breakdown of this. Human merge of Dragonfly, cockroach (legs), and Human. Three different species which is normally what a chimera would be.

Long story short, it's time to actually begin modelling. It's been FAR too long since I've been able to do anything, and with my limited knowledge of maya, I have a feeling I'll have a very hard time ahead.

And so the journey continues

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.