Modelling and Rigging Done :D

Over the last week I've been working on getting the characters for the first 2 shorts modelled and rigged. It all went surprisingly smoothly once I remembered how use Maya, especially since I only had to rig the postman then used a modified version of the same rig on the builders : )

The pic at the top is how I want the eyes and mouth to work on the characters. I've got it all worked out in my head but implementing it is a totally different thing... I'm confident it'll work though and, as well as looking cool, it'll be a massive time saver.

Anyway the characters are all below. The postman is definitely my favourite of the 3, probably because I let myself spend a little more time on him. Textures are going to be flat colours just to seperate elements like jeans from belts from t-shirts etc. I'll do those a little later into animation.

Builder 1

Builder 2

Postman

With those done I finally get to start animation! So I've knocked up a shot list for the shorts. Making a shot list like this helps soooo much in the long run. Ticking the boxes as you go along is always satisfying too!

Right I've got a few more things to do before I can start animating but once I've got some scenes blocked out I'll be sure to upload them onto here.

Cheers

Some Quick Scans (As Promised)

Old Concepts

Newer Concepts

Builder 1

Builder 2

Postman (plus bonus angry old man)

I've been modelling the postman but looking at what I have I think I'm going to need to make some big changes. "Postman"and "Sofa" are the first 2 I'm going to do so I need to get all 3 characters modelled and rigged by Monday.

I'm mad aren't I? Oh well, there goes the weekend....

Cheers

Story Time

I've spent the past week working on story for the project I've been talking about. The idea was to have 5 stories about how bad things happen when things don't fit. Originally the idea was to have these bad things cause a chain reaction which escalates into an epic disaster but with the time constraint and the style choice it didn't seem like it was going to work.

The new approach is to make 5 individual stories which are more intimate, about one or two average joes coming across problems with things fitting. I've spent a lot of time working out the pacing of these stories because I'm aiming for it to be very consistent from story to story.

I came up with a structure that all 5 shorts what have to fit in to:

1. Establish Character
2. Set Up Situation
3. Fitting Problem
4. Attempts to Overcome
5. Something Goes Wrong
6. Final Punchline

I decided the first shot for all the shorts would be about 3 seconds of the character walking in their environment. Their walk, design and environment should establish the character and help set up the situation he/she's about to get themselves in.

The final scene would also have to be consistent too so I decided they would all end with a cut to the company logo (as the client requested) and sound effects to deliver that last punchline.

From there I took some of my story ideas and fit them into the structure I'd come up with...

Postman:
1. Postman in uniform with bag walking down a rural street
2. Postman arrives at house looking nervous, looks inside to check on the dog house in the garden. He then gets out the parcel he has to deliver and sneaks across the garden to the door.
3. Postman finds out he can't fit the parcel through the letterbox
4. Trying to stay quiet he attempts to push the parcel through the letterbox
5. With his last hard push he manages to get the parcel through but his arms go through the letterbox too and get stuck. He hears a growl and turns towards the dog house
6. Bite noise and screams

I did the same with a story about a pair of guys moving in a sofa and a drunk guy who tries to fit his car in a parking space which is too small.

Over the last couple of days I've whipped up some quick storyboards and made them into animatics.

Postman

Sofa

Drunk

I had the idea of making the camera angles kind of CCTV/peeping tom angles to add to the feeling of intimacy with the characters. Like we're watching this story play out from the sidelines. I'm not sure how strongly that will come across but another advantage of this idea is that only having 3 static cameras works well with the style I'm going for. Moving cameras and too many camera changes could disorient with the static textures layed under the objects.

There should be updates soon with the character designs I promised to show and some modelling progress. It's going to be a very busy week, same as every week lately...

Cheers

Making Progress!

This past week or so I've been working on the virally marketing stuff I mentioned in the last post. It's basically going to be a series of shorts about how bad things can happen when things don't fit. Right now I'm working on stories!

I need to have 2 finished animations (they're all around 30 seconds each) by late September, so I want 2 animatics done by the end of the week and 3 more stories in the beginnings so I know where I'm going with the whole project. I'm trying to think of ways to link these stories together too but that's something for another post.

Anyway I've got some pretty pics n vids to show now from the style tests I've been doing this week...









These 3 vids were working on an idea for a style I wanted to explore. I started by working with stills and a quickly made character to see if the idea could work, then went on to some very quick and dirty renders that you can see above.

Here are some of the stills I worked on if you're interested:

Test 1 Test 2

Once the scratchy line and underlaying texture style was locked down I started working on concepts for characters and what the world would look like. Where I'm at now is pretty much what you can see at the top of the post. That was a quick mock up done in photoshop that, with a few tweaks, is pretty much what I'm aiming for the final animations to look like.

I think the backgrounds need more work... I need to find a style for them that fits in with the rest of the world but lets the characters and props stand out at the same time.

I'll scan in the rest of my character concepts soon and upload them! They're a bit out of my comfort zone which is great, I've got too used to doing kiddy designs over the last couple of years. I'll have to do a sculpt soon to make sure these guys are gonna work in 3D, I'll take some pics and upload them too.

Right, back to work...

Cheers