Playblasts

Next job is to add the drawings in the background and sort out the lighting. Here are the animations for all three clips so far. Then to render and add credits!

Lions & Cows/Rabbits & Bunnies

Chihuahua Wedding

Rigging Complete.

 Finally finished rigging my character today after losing a load of work last week. Now to complete the facial rigging and on to animating.

Joints, Skinning & Rigging

I'm in the process of rigging my character now. Thanks to Super Alan I now have a tidy character with the correct geometry and joints. I've skinned her and added weights and now need to rig. 

I've added her eyes and mouth using a projection to get the spacing right and the next job after rigging will be to do the facial rigging. All the components are ready in Photoshop so I will be aiming to move over to Maya later today/tomorrow. It has taken a little bit of jiggling around to get her eyes and mouth in a position I'm happy with and to make sure they're not too distorted by the roundness of her face. 

I'm going to spend a bit of time listening back to the audio and writing down a storyboard with timings and which phonemes will be needed where. Lots to do!

Alice in colour!

The main modelling of Alice has been done now and I'm going to start working on her facial features. I'll draw these in Photoshop and then move them over to Maya as per the Poma facial rigging tutorial. 

She'll have a motif on her dress which I'll add on and some accessories, such as a fairy wand and wings and perhaps a cat. These I'll work on after I've finished my main character. 

I will also start working on the background to my animation soon after a very useful discussion with alumni Chrissie Peters. She offered me some great advice about how to project the different papers I want to use onto planes so I'll be experimenting with them. Once I'm happy with the backgrounds I can start working on the gifs for the children's drawings that will be accompanying Alice's speech and again, I'm hoping to project these onto a plane in Maya as a transparency.

Exciting stuff...

Alice has hair!

Because she's worth it...

I want my character's hair to look messy so I think this has worked ok. I used a lattice deformer and joints to create the curls and waves.  

My next job is to texture the hair and I'd like it to look like strands of wool so I'll play around with UVs in Photoshop.

 As well as working on the textures I'll also be creating her facial features. The real life Alice has a lot of facial expressions so I'm going to pick a few which show her character.

Crazy faces...

Alice in Maya

Thanks to help from Alan, I'm progressing with my model of Alice a lot better now, after a few duff starts. Currently I'm working on her hands and how these will work. They only need to hold very simple objects (like a fairy wand for instance) and so will be more like mittens with a simple pincer grip. 

I've had a play around with hair but at the moment can only seem to get hair on half of her head. Her hair will be very simple but I want it to be curly and bounce when she runs along. @Alan - which is the best tutorial to use for this now? Should I use nHair or would it work better to create curly strands and use a deformer? 

After I've finished the modelling, I'll texture and rig it. Her legs will be more rigid stick legs with a simple bend at the knee, whereas her arms will be bendy so I'll look to use a deformer for these.

Getting there...

Building Alice

I've started building my main character, Alice in Maya. As I didn't do the Minor Project, I'm going for a fairly basic character which I can accessorise to compliment what she is talking about. I'm hoping to make my character quite toy-like so it looks like you could pick her up. She'll be made from fabric-like textures; felt, corduroy, denim and I'm experimenting in Photoshop to create these textures. 

Here's Alice...

 And here are some of the textures so far...

I'm looking at slightly changing her outfit for each little segment, but not drastically. She'll also have props, such as the cat, fairy wings and wand that you see below.  

She'll be made from very simple shapes with bendy arms and more stick-like legs which will bend at the knee. Her facial features will be almost 'stick on' and will be animated as per the Poma tutorial. The animation I see as being quite jittery - similar to Peppa Pig or Charlie and Lola. Most of the charm I'm hoping will come from the facial features and so I'll need to work hard on the facial animation and lip-syncing.

Maya Tutorials List

http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/maya-tutorial-goal-weights.html

http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/maya-tutorial-sketching-particles.html

http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/maya-tutorial-instances-conveyor.html

http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/maya-tutorials-modelling-part-2-uv.html

http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/maya-tutorials-modelling-part-2-high.html

http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/i-had-trouble-with-compositing-in-after.html

http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/maya-tutorials-sprites.html

Maya Tutorials Sprites

Wand_Beauty 2 from Emma Morley on Vimeo.

Maya Tutorials Emit from Curve

I had trouble with compositing in After Effects, so have put up the playblast instead.

Maya Tutorials Modelling Part 2: High Resolution

High-Res Bridge Modelling

Maya Tutorials Modelling Part 2: UV Layouts

UV Layouts complete

Maya Tutorial Instances Conveyor

Maya Tutorial Sketching Particles

Maya Tutorial Goal Weights

Adaptation B - Maya progress

Today I started adding shaders to my scene and Alan showed me how to use the ambient occlusion effectively to bring the scene to life. Below are the original scene in Maya, the hypershade showing the plug-ins to the shaders and the rendered scene so far.

 

Original Maya scene

 

Hypershade

 

Rendered scene so far

Adaptation B - Maya progress

I am working on the model in the middle for the Beachcomber's cottage. I'm using lattice deformers to create a more organic and tangible shape. I want the buildings to look like toys with trees and bushes which look like they are made from card. I'm hoping to achieve a world which looks like a child's play area that they have set up themselves.

 

 

 

 

This is the floor plane for my scene which is set on a beach. I enjoyed making this and Alan showed me a quick way of putting it together.

Mudbox introduction

Today we had our first Mudbox lesson with Simon. We played around with painting mainly and sharing files between Maya, Mudbox and Photoshop.

Maya Tutorials & Film Reviews

Maya Tutorials

Head Modelling - Blocking

Head Modelling - Refined Blocking

Head Modelling - The Mouth

Head Modelling - The Lips

Head Modelling - The Eyes

Film Review

Hero's Journey (Ratatouille) - http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/heros-journey-ratatouille.html

Archetypes (Kingsman) - http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/film-review-kingsman-secret-service.html

B-Movies (The Blob) - http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/film-review-blob-1958.html

Exploitation Movie (Mad Max: Fury Road) - http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/film-review-mad-max-fury-road-2015.html

Documentary (Montage of Heck) - http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/film-review-documentary-montage-of-heck.html

Adaptation (Saving Mr Banks) - http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/film-review-saving-mr-banks.html

Comedy (Jackass) - http://emmalmorley.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/film-review-jackass-comedy.html

Maya tutorials - Mouth