I thought I might go ahead and keep everyone up to date with what I've been doing this winter break. At this point, I'm still working on skinning my astronaut. Maks Naporowski was nice enough to stop by today and help out with the character. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the process.
The reason why skinning is taking so long is that the rig itself is pretty complicated. This is because it is composed of 'stretchy' joints. Unlike a normal joint structure, stretchy joints mean that there are extra joints in between the normal ones (for example instead of just two joints, there would be an extra 5 joints added in between the elbow and wrist joints).
The advantage of this is that I can accomplish greater movement and 'stretchiness' with my character. The downside is that I have to go in and connect the skin to almost every one of these joints.
Anyways, I should be able to finish that before Christmas. I'll also be able to replace my character stand-ins with my actual characters and achieve some basic blocking by the end of this week. I'll then begin my animation after Christmas and have everything done by late January.
Here is a picture of what my large alien will look like. He will be the primary antagonist who will try to eat my small alien. I'll model him tomorrow and he should be good to go after that. The advantage is that he will only be on screen for a short while (15 seconds) and I won't require him to move much. Because of this, I won't have to spend time rigging him. I'll update my progress on him next week and upload some more pre-vis while I'm away for Christmas.
Hi Sean- I hope you were able to keep up with your schedule. Great work so far! Hey- I didn't know your alien would look so chick-like!
ReplyDeleteHappy New Year!
This new version of the bad guy alien looks pretty cool. I like the two sets of eyes. He/she's definitely scarier than the original design. However, right now I think it looks so similar to a plucked chicken that it might not read as an alien, especially since it has a yellow beak and a red 'comb'. I'd change the colors, and integrate some non-bird anatomy, like maybe a snake tail or forward-bending knees.
ReplyDeleteAlso, on an anatomical note, the arms appear to be placed too far from the alien's spine. I'd either move the arms farther back, closer to the base of the neck, or alter the curvature of the spine so that the alien has a longer neck and lower shoulders.
Thanks for the input guys! I just noticed how misplaced his arms are in the pre-vis. They'll be more anatomically correct in the final version.
ReplyDeleteImagine the body of a T-Rex and the head of a giant chicken. He'll have some pretty nasty claws and some sharp spines on the back of his neck. I want to make sure that he's a completely different creature compared to the small alien.
I'm planning on completing him in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!