Sunday 27 December 2015

Pipeline 1 - Character Facial Rigging Part 5



With the help of Alan this tutorial is now finished, next up is texturing and then he is almost finished.


Saturday 26 December 2015

Character - The Turnarounds


Today I finished off the turnarounds for my three characters, expressions sheets are what I will be working on next.

Thursday 24 December 2015

Pipeline 1 - Facial Rigging Part 5 Issue @Alan


I had an issue when doing the phoneme blend shapes tutorial, the shapes that I connected In caused the whole head to come forward slightly when they are turned on. I'm not sure If I did something wrong when connecting them, I made sure to reset the blendshape tool and set it to front of chain.

Wednesday 23 December 2015

Character - The Line Up

This is how the characters line up, the guardian is the smallest with the villain being the tallest, Turnarounds and expression sheets are next on the list.

Pipeline 1 - Facial Rigging Part 4


Today I did rigged the brow for the character, almost finished rigging this guy.

Tuesday 22 December 2015

Character - Guardian Colour Comp #4

I tried to make the overall colour less saturated to bring it more in line with the heros colours as suggested by Eva. I quite like 64 and 68, the latter feels more appropriate as it resembles space a bit more than the forest look of 64.

Character - Hero Props Thumbnails

I was trying to explore different bag designs that the hero could have, as he is an adventurer a satchel seemed appropriate. The sticker book is a game aspect I discussed with Justin, because the hero is quite simple minded, he carries around with him a sticker book that keeps track of the worlds that he has visited and the items he has found.

 I think I am going to tackle the prop aspect slightly differently, as the game is set across many different worlds and genres I think I will start making world specific props that will be items or equipment that the hero can use, the villain could also have a variation of these.

Pipeline 1 - Character Facial Rigging Part 3


Today I did the blink for the character, I had some issues when skinning it but I tried to make it work the best I could.

Monday 21 December 2015

Character - Guardian Colour Comp #3

I followed Phils suggestion and made his boots the same colour as his skin, I think 59 or 62 are my favourite from this page. I do however thing that I should avoid using blue in his outfit as both the other characters have blue in their design.




For comparison I've added the other two pages and the hero (54) and villain, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Pipeline 1 - Character Facial Rigging Part 2


I finished the second part of the tutorial, so now the character has some teeth, a tongue and some more controls.

Pipeline 1 - Character Facial Rigging Part 1


Today i did the first facial rigging tutorial which involved creating the eye controls and the face cam.

Saturday 19 December 2015

Character - Guardian Colour Comp #2


I did some more colour variations today and as I am posting this I've just seen a comment from Phil with some suggested alterations on the last post, so I will work on making them changes and get another set of thumbnails up.

Pipeline 1 - Character Rigging Part 4


I finished off the character rig and I am ready to start facial rigging, I had an issue where once I changed the colour of the C.O.G control, the clavicle control also changed and wouldn't change back to the red and blue.

Pipeline 1 - Character Rigging Part 3


The upper body is rigged and I am ready to move onto the last body rigging tutorial, then it is time to do the facial rigging.

Friday 18 December 2015

Character - Guardian Colour Comp

I think I will have to keep exploring his colour, I quiet like the purple skin but the yellow skin is also working for me. I think 50 is my favourite out of these but I will keep exploring.

Character - Villain Outfit Design

I combined 56 and 58 from the last set of outfit thumbnails, I think he is ready to cause some mischief now. I want to use this project to try different painting styles so for the concepts I will explore a bit and try to find a way that I like.

~ Edit


Added red detail to the collar piece, I think it makes it slightly more striking.

Thursday 17 December 2015

Pipeline 1 - Character Rigging Part 2


Next up is the arms, then the body rig will be complete after adding some restrictions and grouping.

Character - Villain Outfit Thumbnails


Following Phil's feedback I tried to rework the villains default outfit, 56 or 58 are working for me in terms of outfit and the lighter blue skin colour is my favourite so far.

Wednesday 16 December 2015

Pipeline 1 - Character Rigging Part 1


I managed to some how break one of the character legs during skinning, so the leg would straighten whenever I applied an IK to it, after a bit of exploring I found a fix for it. I had to set the preferred angle of the joint and that remedied the issue. So after a bit of fighting the lower half of the character is rigged.

Tuesday 15 December 2015

Character - Villain Colour Comp


I'm still undecided on what colour skin the villain should have, silver kind of works but I think it doesn't really reflect how rebellious he is. 51 is my favourite outfit colour, but I think it can all still be adjusted.

Monday 14 December 2015

Character - Hero Colour Comp


I tried to give the hero some colour, I'm torn between 54 and 57. I decided to make the colours quite bright as I think the game will be aimed at a younger audience.

Saturday 12 December 2015

Character - Guardian Thumbnails 39 - 47

This little guy has a serious small man complex, despite his size he truly believes he is super strong. Packed out with sarcasm and rage he makes the perfect companion.

Thursday 10 December 2015

Narrative - Rendered Stills

Over the last few days we've all been working extremely hard to bring all of our work together, here are some rendered stills of the scenes so far:





We all worked on the archway scene, adjusting the poses and getting it all set up. The factory environment was mostly modelled by Julien, I added a few elements to help clutter it and applied the materials and lighting to the scene.





Saturday 5 December 2015

Shaun of the Dead Film Review

Fig. 1. Shaun of the Dead poster.

Shaun of the Dead (2004) is a comedy, horror film directed by Edgar Wright, who has directed other great comedy’s such as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Hot Fuss and The Worlds End. The film is almost a parody of the zombie genre and it gains its laughs from the use of violence, some jokes that it sets up early on and the simple minded characters.

The story is about the very average guy Shaun (Simon Pegg) and his failure of a life, it starts off with Shaun having a terrible day in which everything goes wrong, he attempts to turn his life around and win back his now ex-girlfriend, but unfortunately for him the day he attempts to change is the day a zombie apocalypse breaks out. Shaun however sees this as a chance to prove to everyone he can be useful, he just has to survive and of course win his ex-girlfriend back.

It could be argued that Shaun of the Dead is essentially a slapstick comedy as a lot of the laughs come from inflicting pain on the zombies or each other, the gag in which Shaun attempts to jump over a fence and it falls over is repeated in other films that Wright directed and has become an expected joke that gets funnier every time. In Shaun of the Dead it comes at a moment in which Shaun is attempting to appear strong and in control, which makes the gag that much funnier.

Fig. 2. Vinyl scene.

The film is also a great parody of the zombie genre and in fact our culture in general, it starts off by showing everyone looking and walking like zombies although the apocalypse hasn’t started yet. It shows people walking around staring at their phones and dragging their feet, ironically this means that when the apocalypse actually happens it’s hard to tell that zombies are actually among them, which is funny to observe. This means that when Shaun and Ed first see a zombie in their garden they assume that she’s just drunk, by accident Shaun causes her to fall and impale herself on a parasol base, when she gets back up they then realise she is a zombie. A funny scene follows in which they attempt to kill two zombies by throwing vinyl records at them, as Ed pulls them out and throws them Shaun complains that some of this collection is rare. So as two zombies slowly approach them with the intention to eat them, they search through the collection looking for vinyl’s that aren’t that valuable.

Another great scene is when they attempt to get into the Winchester pub for safety, they are surrounded by zombies and they are pretending to be zombies to not cause any suspicion. Ed’s phone rings and he casually tells the group he needs two seconds and answers the phone, discussing with someone that was looking to buy some weed. Obviously this alerts all the zombies that they are in fact human and that they should be devouring them, the stupidity draws out a chuckle as most of the things Ed does are idiotic.

 To conclude Shaun of the Dead is a film that draws most of its human from violence like slapstick comedy, it is ultimately a parody of zombie films and attempts to make the genre into a funny experience instead of the usual scary, hiding behind a blanket kind of experience. The gags that continue throughout other films almost feel rewarding every time you see them as you are in on the joke and it aids in finding them that much funnier. The laughs also come from how mundane they make zombie fighting appear, as they always have something more important to be discussing like getting back together or which vinyl can be thrown.


Illustration List:
Figure 1. Shaun of the Dead poster. (2004) From: Shaun of the Dead, Directed by: Edgar Wright [Film still]  At: http://images.moviepostershop.com/shaun-of-the-dead-movie-poster-2004-1020228593.jpg (Accessed on 05/12/2015)

Figure 2. Vinyl scene. (2004) From: Shaun of the Dead, Directed by: Edgar Wright [Film still] At: https://maxqueen.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/lancer-de-disques-contre-les-zombies.jpeg (Accessed on 05/12/2015)

Narrative - Male Character Rigged & Posed


I finished off the rig and decided to pose the character, hopefully he is ready for animation now. I feel like I learnt a lot of new things making this rig and it was a challenge, even though it is pretty basic.


Saturday 28 November 2015

Wednesday 25 November 2015

Character - Last Session

We had our last character session yesterday, we were put into groups and given a brief in which we each had to create two characters and one environment concept. We were set a deadline and as the class progressed Justin threw a few obstacles our way to make it a bit more interesting, asking for new designs for specific parts, in which he also set time limits for.

Here is what I did in the time we had, lots of scribbles but it was actually quite fun to do.




Monday 23 November 2015

Pipeline 1 - Character Skinning Part 5

The pelvis was by far my least favourite experience in Maya, that was a battle that went on for ages.


Sunday 22 November 2015

Saturday 21 November 2015

Pipeline 1 - Character Skinning Part 3

I created loads of little problems for myself while doing this tutorial, which meant it took a lot longer than expected.


Friday 20 November 2015

Pipeline 1 - Character Skinning Part 2

I added the ribbon spine to the character scene and created the rest of the skeleton ready to start skinning.


Pipeline 1 - Character Skinning Part 1

I started the skinning tutorial today, which involved making a ribbon spine, I am interested to see how it works with the character.


Thursday 19 November 2015

Character - Guardian (Sidekick) Thumbnails 27 - 38

I started to get some ideas down for the guardian, he is the smallest of the three characters and yet he believes that he is the strongest, definitely a case of short man syndrome. I quite like the idea of him being a creature of some kind, 31 and 37 I think are going in the right direction.


Tuesday 17 November 2015

Character - Villain Thumbnails 35 - 38

After talking to Justin today he suggested focusing my attention on the villain and guardian/sidekick character as the hero has started to determine the style of the world. This meant because the hero had a larger than normal head, the other characters would have to as well to fit into the world. I went back and started to sketch out the villain, I'm quite drawn to the idea of the villain not being human, I like the direction that 38 is going in so I will continue to explore this character.


Monday 16 November 2015

Pipeline 1 - UV Layout 1, 2 & 3

Today I finished off the UV tutorials, the trousers didn't quite come out exactly as planned.


Torso UV Map
Eye UV Map
Hair UV Map
Head UV Map
Trouser UV Map
Shoe UV Map