@Alan Minor Project - Pigeon Head finalization

I added the hair/feather flick to the top of the pigeons head, the final thing I need to do for the head model is the snagging list. 

Minor Project - Pigeon Head Progress

Minor Project - Eagle Head Mouth and Eyes

Speed Posing Three

Rigging Techniques - Can Exchange

Rigging Techniques - No Pole Vector

Rigging Technique - Curve Driven Spine

Minor Project - Design/World Building

Based on some recent feedback on my overall design for my world, Alan pointed out my lack of it. He suggested thinking about what certain objects will look like in my world and how I plan on translating that into Maya. Based on my style choice it seems like a lot of it can be done using textures. However, for the mud I could still possibly use Mudbox along with the textures or just stick with textures. But I will do a small test and see which looks better at some point.

IK/FK Switch

Speed Posing two

Minor Project - Bird Wing Orthographs

(Eagle)

(Pigeon)

Minor Project - Environment Normal Map Tests

These are some normal map texture tests. They are a little hard to see but I made mud and ground stamps for Mudbox and then applied them. I thought they looked a bit too realistic so I used the smooth brush to make them more subtle, then I plan on letting texture paintings do the rest. I had no unknown problem when I brought the Normal maps into Maya, which was black dots appearing. However, when I looked in the render view they did not appear which is good but I would like to know if this is an issue or something I can ignore.

Minor Project - Pigeon head Mouth and Eyes

The way I designed my pigeon character was giving him oval eyes. I was debating whether to keep spherical eyes and try to sculpt the eyelids to look like my design or have the eyes just be ovals. I spoke to Alan and he suggested using a lattice deformer and increasing its size so that the sphere maintains its oval appearance. I made a duplicate of the head model so that I could see what it would like like using a deformer. I quite like the look of it with the deformer but if I want to keep them like this it means I can't delete the lattice, which may cause problems later. As well as, making some progress with the eyes I managed to model the mouth. It was a little hard but I'm happy with the out come. However, the geometry needs to be cleaned up a bit.

@Alan Minor Project - Pigeon Head Model

This is my pigeon characters head model so far. At the moment I have been working on whether I want the beak to be extruded from the head or if I should model it separately. The images above are from me extruding, which doesn't look too bad but now I need to make so that the mouth is open a bit.

Minor Project - Rough Fifth Animatic

I've added the music and sound effects to my animatic. I feel a lot happier with some of the new shots, they look more dynamic and interesting. I still feel like there needs to be some tweaks in certain areas. Especially with the POV shots, some can be changed to over the shoulder shots to make it less jarring for the viewer. Overall, I feel like I'm starting to refine my story. I have started making a pre-viz to help show the camera movements, which I hope to have finished in the coming week.

Rigging - Conditional Squash and Stretch

Minor Project - Machine Gun Model

For this model I still need to do some more work on it, but at the moment this is the base model. I plan on using textures to stylize it more and add a bullet belt to characterize it more. 

Minor Project - Rough Animatic Five WIP

There was a lot of problems with Premier Pro making this animatic, but the new shots based on feedback have been added. At the moment this is a rough of the rough, I'm still having some technical issues. But I'm hoping to have a a version with sound soon and make some changes to the shots to make the whole thing flow better.

Minor Project - Typewriter Effect Test

In my previous animatic the opening was a bit cliche and that came up in my feedback. It was suggested that I just have the text exposition come up on screen rather than using the newspapers. This just to see how it would look as well as sorting out the timing. At the moment this is a bit longer than I would like it to be (excluding the 10 seconds of black at the end)

Minor Project - Updated Eagle Turnaround

Similarly to the pigeon I have updated the eagle characters turnarounds based on the new style. I have not fully characterized my characters in these turnarounds in terms of WWI attire and such, so I can understand the characters anatomy. However, I will soon be uploading drawings of both characters fully characterized.   

Minor Project - Updated Pigeon Character Turnarounds

These are updated turnaround sheet based on my new character design style. I plan on doing a second sheet where the wings are spread out.

Speed posing

                                                                          Before:

After:

In yesterdays lesson we spent 5 minutes trying to pose moom, as practice for when we need to pose while animating. Above I have images of my first attempt to pose moom in 5 minutes and then one where I went back and improved it.

Rigging - Squash, Stretch and Volume Preservation

Today we covered some rigging techniques for squash and stretch. We learn how to preserve volume when applying squash and stretch to an object/character rig.

Minor Project - Character Update