Week 17 The Animation Workshop - Vikings Concept To Character Video

This is a short video from my presentation showing the steps i went through to create the viking scene... enjoy.

Week 16 The Animation Workshop - Vikings Turn Around Video

This is a video showing the turn around of my 3D viking.

Week 16 The Animation Workshop - Vikings FINAL IMAGE

After SIX WEEKS the viking image is complete... fully textured andrendered with rendered... i am very happy with it... please let me know what you think... cheers.

Week 16 The Animation Workshop - Vikings Lighting

This week we have been lighting our scene... this is far more complex than it sounds as you can't just shine a light on the scene because it contains many objects that i would want to have different textures and are made from different materials that the program are not aware of... so i have to tell Maya hoe the light should react to each surface and where it should fall to be convincing.

 

Week 15 The Animation Workshop - Vikings Rigged & Posed Render

This is my posed render of the viking scene... the character is fully rigged... meaning he can be moved into positions without deformations happening to the shell (the rig is very very simple and if i move him too much deformations will occur but this can be avoided by painting the skin weights more accurately) and the scene is now complete with all props... next comes lighting and texturing.

Week 12 - 14 The Animation Workshop - Vikings First Render

This is a quick render of my scene... using Mental Ray rendering in Maya... The character isn't posed yet and there are a few props missing (spikey drum sticks... damn it!!!)... but you get the idea

Week 12 - 14 The Animation Workshop - Vikings UV Mapping

This is my viking FINALLY uv mapped...




These are the components that make up the viking. I have to translate the 3D information onto a 2D plane so it can be coloured and textured. I have to do this by cutting and sewing together the skin in the correct places... and believe me... it's a lot harder than it sounds...!!! 

 
And this is what i end up with... He just has a checker texture on him now to allow me to see any inconsistancies in the mesh... when i paint and texture the parts above in PhotoShop they can then be applied back onto the model.



My Viking in his "Ska" gear...!!!



Week 12 - 14 The Animation Workshop - Vikings in 3D

These last 3 weeks have been spent learning Autodesk Maya... a 3D modelling program so i can produce 3D versions of my viking for (in theory) computer games or animation. In this case it's purely for a still picture. These are the latest images of the completed model. Next comes UV mapping... oh joy!

Week 11 The Animation Workshop - Vikings

This week we started a 6 week project in which we will build our first fully renered 3D model and place it in a scene. The theme is VIKINGS. We had to imagine we were casting an animated film with very stylized and simple vikings. Firstly i wanted to try and get some strong silhouettes by using a large black marker and not thinking about detail or how it would look.

After the silhouettes i went on to sketch a few out and develop some ideas.

Here are some initial sketches of some vikings

I then decided after researching viking rune stones i wanted to make them non-human and use some of the textures from the stones and runes to make them look as though they were some how made of these materials.

We then had to produce a line up of 3-5 characters that would feature in our fictional film... i chose to make the vikings part of a rock 'n' roll band... ROCK 'n' roll...!!!

Anyway... these are my final characters...

We had to choose one character to develop and eventually model... i chose the tall drummer character (the one with the gigantic spikey drumsticks!!!) and here is the turn around of the model... this is used to see the dimensions and to help the modeller retain the size and shape of the concept.

I then had to pose the character in an indoor environment with light and texture... to give the impression of what it would look like when finally rendered in 3D... i am not happy with the background at the moment and will change it slightly to be a little more inkeeping to the style of the figure. I am also missing the drumkit and the stool... these will all be added a bit later.

Week 10 The Animation Workshop

Today we looked more in depth at value... we were asked to produce an image of a robot from the 1930's-40's chasing a man... the idea was to draw the focus of the viewer to wherever you wanted them to look using only the value and contrast... hopefully it works!

Week 10 The Animation Workshop

After swapping mid week i have joined in with the class at a stage where we are drawing jazz music with as few lines as possible and learning about "value" and "contrast" and it's importance in the composition of a piece of work.

These were my first sketches of JAZZ... but they were too complex for this task

I tried to simplify them whilst still keeping the feeling of the piece

Thius is my final image

Week 10 The Animation Workshop

I have swapped lines into the Computer Graphics Artist (CGA) course... it is much more suited to me as i feel it is much more creative and i can realise my ideas and not have to worry about the precision of the model which i really struggled with on the Animation line... summed up... i'm a happy boy!

Week 8 & 9 The Animation Workshop - Me at 6 years old

Week 8 & 9 was all about drawing for animation... so a lot of sketching from film... all to capture movement. This was a project where we had to animate ourselves at the age of 6...

Week 8 & 9 The Animation Workshop - Me at 6 years old

Week 8 & 9 was all about drawing for animation... so a lot of sketching from film... all to capture movement. This was a project where we had to animate ourselves at the age of 6... this is me collecting my football stickers... got, got, got... NEED!!!

Week 8 & 9 The Animation Workshop - Madame Medusa 2

Week 8 & 9 was all about drawing for animation... so a lot of sketching from film... all to capture movement. This was a Disney model that had to walk around a static character and display signs of comfort... or fake comfort! This was my second effort at this frustrating model.

Week 8 & 9 The Animation Workshop - Madame Medusa

Week 8 & 9 was all about drawing for animation... so a lot of sketching from film... all to capture movement. This was a Disney model that had to walk around a static character and display signs of comfort... or fake comfort!

Week 7 The Animation Workshop - Flour Sack

We were asked to compose a whole scene with 4 sequences using a flour sack model on a cliff being chased by a monster. It had to jump the cliff to survive.

Week 3 - 6 The Animation Workshop

Through weeks 3 - 6 we learned the animation basics such as squash and stretch... and follow through... the brief was "A ball with a tail had to enter the screen and exhibit some emotion"

Week 3 - 6 The Animation Workshop

Through weeks 3 - 6 we learned the animation basics such as squash and stretch... and follow through... the brief was "A frog enters from the left and a fly enters from the right... the frog eats the fly"

Week 1 & 2 The Animation Workshop - Animation

Weeks 1 & 2 of The Animation Workshop... thrown in at the deep end we were asked to create an animation in groups from a sound clip we were given.