Character and Enviroment Textures

Boy Character Body Rig

Girl Character Final Texture

Narrative: Presentation Slide Design

Here's the design I've made to go on the background of our 'Making Of' presentation, I just left it cute and simple.

 

 

 Here's some example slides:

 

Narrative: Rough Facial Expressions For Characters

Just a few ideas for what some of their facial expressions might be like throughout the animation. Need some more designs for each and refinement.

Narrative: Starting To Lay Out UV's For Boy's Head

I was asked to help with laying out the UV's for the characters, and started with the boy's head, I needed to learn more about UV mapping anyway so was happy to give it a go! I started by following the tutorial for UV mapping the head but came across problems when trying to unfold the model. It was modelled by Will and there was some more complicated areas, but after a lot of playing around with settings / etc, Alan managed to find the problem and delete some extra vertices hidden inside the model. It still refused to unfold so we had to cut the model up into smaller sections so it was more manageable for Maya to deal with. I think it was unfolding really slowly because the head was quite big at the back and the insides of the ears had some complicated geometry. We got there in the end!

Refining the Boy Character

With Alans help I refined the model by attaching the hands, adding a bottom and helping wills modeling with edges here and there. I think the boxy-ness that will created within the model looks really good and stylist fitting our scene and story. 

Girl Body Model so far

Heres the body part of the model and hopefully tomorrow it will be finished and I can attach the head that Gemma has been modelling. Then the characters are finished with the odd refinement here and there.

Boy Character Body Model

Overall model for the boy character, some refinement needed in clothing and hands.

Character Designs

Narrative: Environment Design

My Rough Factory Design

With Will's Characters

Another One With Will's Character Designs

I made a rough idea for our environment but still needs a lot of refining such as having the paper shredder and 'rejections' lever / trap door etc..  but think we should stick with the straight-on fixed camera throughout. I think the conveyor belt design I have here will be 3D modelled, along with the characters and then maybe we will just have a painted 2D background to suggest the rest of the factory world and keep focus on what's happening in the foreground. I've added a couple of Will's character designs in here as these were my favourite ones and I wanted to see how they would fit in with the factory space. Although I can't quite decide which I prefer at the moment, it's all work in progress!

Character Building

I keep trying to figure out how to draw my character and what type of figure they will be. So I began research drawings. I find that it helps me to understand the character more when I see images of drawings. I see what I like and don't like and begin building my character. 

Heres some images I found helpful. 

.

I started looking into the different types of expressions each person makes. It's hard to create expression on a face when you don't know exactly which one is which. The expression I'm really looking for is love and love sick. A silly/foolish look on a boy. 

Using the lessons and tips that Justin has thought use I wanted to build the character using shapes. Our character in the factory isn't strong but he isn't weak. He's not big built but he's not skinny. He's sort of a built of the factory, clumsy and box like.