I still need to figure out her arm movements or displace when her arms move I think. But everything else looks fine. I’ve already started lining her, but here she is: Walk Cycle
I’ve scrapped multiple styles of her walking and went with this one: Click here!
I’m having problems with the perspective of her hair and some other things but I think she has a bit of attitude. (I may be biased)
I’ve been working extensively in my sketchbook and for the past couple of weeks have not really shown it. But here are some snapshots of my sketchbook:
This is what I basically started out with:
And this is where I’m going:
That rough turn around is what I’ve been showing as basically my locked in design. I’m pretty happy with the shapes and silhouette. I went around and asked a few people these three questions:
1. Does the silhouette of the figure have good movement?/Do you like the silhouette of the character?
2. What do you feel could help strengthen the shape and feel of the character?
3. What do you think about the hairstyle?
Everyone seems to enjoy the basic silhouette of the figure, the main comment I received was the over-all symmetry of her arms. The exaggerated curves were a bit too exaggerated. I can see what they mean and I do think it would be nice to take away a little volume from her upper arms and just a little from her forearms. As one of my teacher’s commented, she seems to have too large of forearms.
And while most do enjoy her hairstyle, the same teacher made a point that has changed my mind about her hairstyle. The style I chose will almost be like another object to animate. It’ll be doing a lot of bouncing, swinging and rolling around, more work than I have time for so I’m thinking about changing the hair style. He also told me to figure out her shoes and hands a bit more, which I plan to do.
Everyone I talked to likes the curves (especially her butt) and her facial expression so I think all I need to do is just play with arms, shoes and hands a bit.
We were talking about making like an exaggerated curl at the top of her head like sketched out above with a bun in the back. So it’s less dangling but will still provide movement and an exaggeration to her body.
Some quick sketches of other hairstyles I could possibly use. I honestly still love the large swirly curl, I just think it’ll be too much to animate and make look good in such little time.
Production week 1:
-Final character turnaround complete (along with smaller, quicker turnarounds for the children she’ll be walking by)
- Story board and (hopefully) animatic done.
-Environments drawn.
Production week 2:
-Key poses/rough pass of the animation.
-Environments completed and put into Harmony.
Production week 3:
- Be in the process of in-betweening/clean up of animation.
Production week 4:
-Cleaned up animation complete
-In the process of coloring/touch ups
Production week 5:
-Cleaned polished animation of two scenes from a larger story. The two beginning scenes where she is sitting at the vanity getting ready, walking out into the busy streets where a bunch of kids are trick-or-treating and ends with her reaching the front doors and pushing them open.
I’m also hoping to complete some concept art or so along the way but that’s just something I’d like to do on the side.
Just a couple of ideas for how I want the different illustrations to look like.
I also had about five pages to scan in of my progression of the character but my scanner isn’t working with my new laptop right now.
I realized I never actually told the story of my character:
It started off as three identical triplets. At first you only see two and you see them getting ready for something and there is music quietly beginning in the background. As they put on their make up, dress up in costume-ish clothes, and fix their hair, they pass around photos of two men and a gun, a knife and a long cigarette. The one that I’ve been character designing(Sister #2) smiles at her sister, who would have been dressed in a Victorian outfit, and they leave the small room and out onto the street where children are running around trick or treating. The sisters walk down together to a large Halloween bash and enter the building where hazy smoke, laughter, and dancing is going on, the music becomes the loudest here as if the real story has just begun. The sisters slowly slink around the large dance floor until their eyes catch one man, one of the men in their photographs. Sister #1 smiles and stalks over to him, getting him to follow her after dancing slightly. The man, though, is oblivious to the other sister walking behind them as they leave the dance floor and go into a quiet hallway. Sister #2 stays quietly behind them until the opportune moment, or her sister backed against the wall the man’s back facing her. Taking out the knife seen earlier, Sister #2 kills the man and they drag him further down the hall, stealing his costume which Sister #1 puts on.
They return to the party, arm in arm and continue on with the party until they the second man from their photos walk by, a small envelope in his hand and in the other, a key. Sister #2, who was pretending to lazily smoke the long cigarette perks up and Sister #1 gets up quickly, following the man towards the same hallway, trying once again to seduce him while in man #1′s costume. Distracted and confused the other man is taking aback by Sister #1′s advances thinking it was the man. Sister #1 falls to her knees, sending man #2 into bewilderment but the scene cuts back to Sister #2 who is now smoking in their direction. With a glance around the room, she points her cigarette at the man, taking her time to aim and taking a deep breath, she blows into the cigarette, a dart flying out and hitting the man in the neck. Successfully the man is knocked out and Sister #2 goes to help her sister in stripping the man from his costume, taking his key and his envelope as Sister #2 puts on man #2′s costume. Sister #1 helps her fix the cowboy hat she now has and hands her the gun discreetly. With a small reassuring smile, Sister #1 turns towards the party, like a guard and Sister #2 heads towards the door man #2 was heading for. With the key in hand, she knocks quietly before unlocking the door entering.
The room is a large, well furnished office, a dark, mahogany table settled at the end of the room with a small, mousy looking pouring over some papers, the desk is cleared off except for a record player that seems to be playing the song we’ve been hearing from the start. The camera pans around the room as to see the lavish office and stops at woman who looks exactly like the other two Sisters except she is handcuffed, hands pulled above her head and she’s sitting on the floor in a mess. Their eyes meet and an understanding is passed through them. Sister #2 walks over to the man at the desk, presumably the head boss of whatever it is he controls. Sister #2 hands him the envelope which he opens and reads, a document he signs and then hands it back to Sister #2. As she takes the envelope back, her arm tenses, still in the air, envelope hanging limply from her hand. She had since reached behind her and time slows as she pulls out the gun from behind her, pointing it the boss’s head and firing one single shot.
The man falls back from the force of the shot and not wasting any time Sister #2 yanks off the hat from her head and wipes of the mustache they had painted on her face as she rushes to help Sister #3 out of her restraints. The record playing on the record player reaches an end, the only thing discernible from the background is the party outside and the noise of the record player, playing a vinyl that’s already ended. The two sisters share a smile and Sister #2 helps the other sister up, carefully walking out of the room.
And that’s it. That was probably really confusing but, it works out in my head. I can’t tell you why I didn’t draw Sister #1 in any of the above stuff, probably because I’ve been focused on getting the design right.
There will probably be more of me posting this weekend. But I kind of again want to reiterate the fact that I want to focus on 2d. I guess it was my fault for finding that guy that does all the sweet 3d art. But I was more inspired by The Triplets of Belleville and kind of want to continue on that concept of caricatures and exaggeration of people BUT textured and colored like the 3d art that I posted. So basically I want to make a traditional animation short and with smoke and mirrors color, shade, and texture it (in photoshop and harmony) with that same gritty, creepy feel.
This is a REALLY rough concept drawing of the main character of the short I want to do. I’ll post up the story later but I just wanted to clarify.
Part 1 (I’m sure there’ll be a Week #1 part 2 coming up.)
I guess I didn’t clearly state what I was thinking about doing. But I either really wanted to make a traditional animation piece that looks and feels like stop motion instead of doing a CG piece OR model a CG puppet and make a small 30 second to 1 minute short and make it look at gritty as a stop motion clay character. But I really wanted to do the first one more. Anyways, that doesn’t matter. I just want to achieve stop motion quality without actually using the stop motion techniques.
I went onto CG Talk and began to look through some of the stuff people have accomplished, first going into the 3d animation area and found some cool examples of what I kind of want to achieve.
Title: Them Dark Odors
By: Joel Sundberg
Done with Maya, mental ray, Photoshop, ZBrush.
I found this guys work, Damien Canderle, to be really neat in achieving that sculpted clay look using Photoshop and Zbrush here are a few pieces of his:
Title: Alien for the Siggraph
Name: damien canderle
Software: Photoshop, VRay, ZBrush
Title: The Gnom
Name: damien canderle
Software: Photoshop, VRay, ZBrush
Title: we are not alone 2
Name: damien canderle
Software: Photoshop, VRay, ZBrush
EDIT: I found some more of his stuff which is just amazing!
I like this sort of stop motion/clay modeled feel. I have a love for things dirty and gritty and that’s why I also love Nightmare Before Christmas as well. It’s not as extreme as the art above but you know, it’s also gritty. Of course I would never attempt to delve that deeply into making a 3d character so maybe something simpler but with the same textures?
I also have a love for a lot of Tool videos, they’re surreal and strange.
I love the distortion and exaggeration (almost to a grotesque) of characters. The best traditional animation I’ve seen of such exaggeration is The Triplets of Belleville.
I’ll update with more later. But I really want to merge the style of this style of exaggerating the people and rendering it so it comes out more clay-mated with more of the texture seen in the CG work. Does that make sense?
EDIT: Instead of making another post I’ll just edit this one.
Title: bunny is tired
Name: Greg Petchkovsky
Country: Australia
Software: 3ds max, Digital Fusion, Photoshop, VRay, ZBrush
It’s been really hard trying to figure out who exactly has inspired me a great deal. Actually, not quite, I know who has inspired me. I know who I love and who I admire, but I don’t know how to completely put it down in words how what aspects of their artwork that I admire.
I think everyone that knows me or has talked to me knows that one of my all time favorite artist is Gustav Klimt. I even tried to do an earlier project based off of his work (it didn’t quite turn out). I just love everything he has accomplished, the colors, the design, the feel of all his pieces are just so incredibly there.
The ability to mix patterns into his work is something I want to be able to do. I don’t think it’s been fully explored in an animation’s world and to be able to get this Gustav Klimt feel in motion would be so immensely powerful. I think it could make for something spectacular.
He’s been my favorite “fine arts” artist that I’ve ever had the pleasure of learning about. I know that a lot of my artwork has been inspired by him and his color palettes. I have yet to achieve anything that looks remotely like his things but I would love to be able to incorporate patterns and art nouveau style into an animated piece.
And it’s funny how my likings differ so drastically, but looking at my favorite animated pieces, Tim Burton’s artistic direction as lured me in time and time again. Even if it’s for Live Action movies, he’s maintained a feel that is just so completely his own.
And I think Nightmare Before Christmas contrasted with something like Corpse Bride (another stop motion movie) is even grittier and has a better feel to it. That’s another thing I want to introduce into animated pieces, a stop motion feel without actually using stop motion. I don’t know if it would be in 3d or traditional.
I just love the use of neutral colors and then a small dash of colors in his films to really contrast between two worlds. Since I’m still adamant about continuing on my first idea about the maid getting sucked into another world, I thought this would be incredibly useful.
If I were to do a traditional animated piece, I would love to have that very sketchy feel to it to add to the staccato nature of a stop motion feel.
I really don’t know what to say, I mean honestly, I don’t know what to really say. All of my favorite artists are so very different from each other.
Sorry about being a little late in posting this.
Also, sorry for even posting this. I’m really unhappy with this but I had really nothing to work with, no camera, no scanner, no tablet, so I tried the best I could. I definitely want to try doing this over. I’m really not proud of this at all, it’s short and it’s nothing like I had wanted but I needed to post something, right?
I uploaded it as an MPGE4 but I don’t like the way it came out. I’ll see if I can do it again. It’s nothing big, just played with the drop shadow on her and made her move and made it scroll through the camera. That’s it.
