An exercise that all professional animators (Disney, Pixar) do and help get to the head of a character is working on a pose and an expression a day. That exercise will help with getting used to posing the character by starting with quick thumbnail drawings. 

For the expressions, a good start for Hemmy will be to look into human faces and gradually move to animal ones. The drawings will help to get a good idea of squash and stretch on the characters’ faces and what sort of controls will have to be added in order for the drawings to correspond to the digital version.

For the body, it’s important to get good arcs (spine curvatures), especially for the dance sequence. That will build a good foundation artistically for the animation period. 

Examples of expression sheets and poses

We shouldn't take the muscle system too far but stick to more simple pose deformers to switch our concentration to animating . People will forgive a bit folding on the geometry but will not forgive poor animation. LOOK AT THE OVERALL PICTURE; DON’T WASTE TIME ON UNNECESSARY TWEAKING. 

Two computers in the red room will have the Pose Deformer plug-in installed for us to use it for any skinning issues with the body and enable better squash and stretch on the face and body. Squash and stretch will be more necessary for Hemmy as a sidekick, more humorous character as opposed to Kinnaree who is a more human, elegant creature. 

The facial animation will work with sculpted blendshapes but also clusters on the top for more control of the facial features and expressions. It’s best to have the head separate from the rest of the mesh for easier blendshape control. 

Grab some generic characters to start practising animation. Or even work on just curves and arcs which is central to the character and work our way outwards by moving to the body and then the limbs and the face. Once we get the root animation right then it will be easier to work with the rest of the body. Practice posing will help in what pose we want to get into and make animation more understandable to us. Work with layers when using root animation and use low-res geometry to make life easier. 

Even to work on our Pre-Viz, we will have to practice our posing from this very early stage of refining the characters. Put together reference sheets for emotions, not just the generic sad and happiness but also the in-between, less obvious emotions. That communication level is vital for an animator but also for an actor. World known actors think how to make things via their character but they still have to communicate and find a way to do it in a reduced manner. When thinking of Kinnaree her emotions will be a combined graceful-happy, graceful-sad. With Hemmy it’s playful-happy, playfull-sad. These emotions will take time to depict. 

While refining the characters for animation we might find that we’ll have to work with limitations as the characters might not be able to do any extreme posing. Sometimes restriction is good; it makes you figure it out. 

Look up the Book : Dynamic Drawing. 

Include strands to our week to week schedule to merge the animation practice process with the character refinements of the first two weeks. This will run through the whole projects. 

Side schedule strands for the next two weeks: Set up, Posing and expression practice 

Look into the shaders to work out the complexity and reduce rendering time. 

Use Alan’s tutorial to reduce the size of the maps -> less rendering time 

Use material x for mental ray. 

Mipmap tends to work better.

Major Project Proposal by andriana_laskari

Minor Project submission, includes:

Art of

Supporting concepts

Two complete character turnarounds

Hemmy's skinning was a long process which consisted of binding and rebinding the skin to try out different binding methods. At the moment he can only be posed simply because extreme poses like sitting down cause deformation of the geometry. Next step will be to tweak any stretching the joint values have caused to the texturing. 

Happy New Year, everyone. Some more progress..., mainly texture overhauling. I'm using traditional Lai Thai symbols and shapes to develop different elements. The images below have been arranged chronologically over the past two weeks.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas! A friend's little westie dog joined me and my flatmates during our Christmas holidays and I thought it was a great opportunity for me to observe the dog's behaviour and movements. I've put together a short video starring Snowy with notes on her movements which will be a great help for me when I start animating. It was a nice break from my current skinning.  I will update my progress with Hemmy's rigging and skinning very soon after I complete it.

I also observed how her skeleton bent and deformed in different poses.

Hey, guys. Ignore the stretched texturing, this is turnaround mainly to analyse the character with some of the improvements that were laid out from previously and from today. I've extended the length of the crown model, hip wings and tail planes. So arranging and editing the geometry. Texturing is much more native to the colour palette in this version. Experimented golden and warm hues, but it will probably be taken back in to Mudbox to be sorted out.

I'm not sure how to approach the fur surrounding the thighs and gradual decreasing to the legs. At the moment it is extruded edge planes but I'm thinking of duplicating the thigh geometry and having flat fur textures with transparency options. Perhaps have a couple of these building up and offsetting textures to give it a bit of depth?

The last week has been very challenging in terms of transferring the detail sculpted from Mudbox to work back into Maya. I experimented with Displacement as well as with Normal Maps but the latter didn't seem to work as it created deep shadows and roughness on the model. 

I used my own stencils to sculpt details around Hemmy's 'mane', his necklace, his bracelets, tail and ornamental 'flames'. I am pleased with it so far but there is much more that needs to be done to perfect him. I am not settled with his colour yet but that is something that will be looked into as soon as both characters are put together in one scene with the environment. 

This afternoon/ evening, progress in Mudbox has been happening and things are underway. This is mainly a lot of experimental creation, having stripped back on the hip and tail feathers and hair planes for now. The crown has been tidied, though it's design on basis is lurking somewhere between genericism, armoured visor, and Thai theme. May have to restrict some colour. Whereas previously in one of the Kinnaree concepts the colour is predominantly warm hues with golden blends, the specularity tests now function to introduce Thai blues to areas of the body. The impact of the specularity might be tuned down, however. The incandescent skin crest is mainly to inject a bit of magical energy/ aura into the character and express some ethnic radiance. Not sure if this will initially work without any combined environment and character render tests. The design is subject to change as it is also looking slightly generic, although this was derived from a Lai Thai shaped origin. In Maya, diffuse and normals have been plugged into what I would consider a rather messy sub-scattered hypershade node, but, it is beginning to show tasteful and reassuring outcome. (Unfortunately, no screens to evidence this as of yet).

In the second image, by 'projection type' I mean the animated texture file type in Maya and not the texture projection painting method in Mudbox. It may or may not be desirable now that the environment has been experimented with and revised to a better form (you can see how I mean by taking a look at this recent post of the environment props). The idea of a projected texture moving on a part of the character might look boggling with all the enameling colours.