Character Update - Alphonse

I started on Alphonse in maya then moved into 3D coat, re using some of the previous models features I was able to get a much quicker turnaround on the character, he is not far from done now.

Character turnarounds

Alphonse

Simon

Loretta

Simon Character Update

It's been a while since I updated with the character progress. Here is the near finished version of Simon. He has taken a while to get to this point, just a few things such as finger tips and ears, also his hair and eyes to do. Now I have this base mesh the turn around for the next few characters will be much faster.

I have done three passes for this these being:

1. The main beauty pass, with just toon colour, lights and shadows.
2. The Ambient Occlusion
3. The contour line pass

with just these three passes all together I'm getting a nice look to the piece, compared to the beauty on it's own.

Here is the breakdown on some primitive objects:

A month of working out story...!

It's been a while since an update on here because we've been busy rethinking our ideas. Once we were back at uni we learned our piece had to be exactly one minute long. After acting out our ideas so far to see what the timing would be like, we found the story was simply too rushed, so we then spent the next weeks coming up with entirely new ideas - but ideas that would still let us use the character Jack had started modelling.

Our original idea involved two boys playing in their garden, imagining themselves in amazing scenes like a western saloon and medieval castle. While we loved the idea of showing the difference between the real world and the imaginary world that children see, we simply couldn't cut it down to one minute without sacrificing too much of what made it charming in the first place.

Our new idea still involves two boys, but this time they are fighting over a toy plane in a playground when a pretty girl sat on the jungle gym playing with a toy truck grabs their attention. They boys continue fighting, but this time in an attempt to traverse the jungle gym and reach the girl first. But when the younger boy prevails and reaches her, it transpires that he was only interested in the toy truck.

You can read the full script by clicking the 'script' tab at the top of the page.

We are currently finishing off concepts and storyboards, gathering screenshots and videos in preparation for Thursday's progress presentation, and creating a 3D environment for an animatic.

I have also spent some time redesigning the blog to match our new logo colours. Everything looks a lot more bold and consistent now.

Before:

Now:

-Caitlin

Character Model - Update 03

I decided to take the model I made in Maya and voxelize it in 3D Coat as there were some issues with anatomical proportions on the face. It was easier to fix them in 3D coat as that's what the next stage would have been anyway. After import and a bit of editing I had this model:

I had moved around some of the features to make them more like how we wanted the character, then I started adding more details, which were more detailed ears, eyelids, and eyes. I did this in 3D Coat's surface as it is easier to add little details. Here what I have so far:

 

Just need to finalize details on the body and add hands and hair, and then I can retopo and paint textures for him.

-Jack

Initial Logo Design

These were some of the first things I drew when we decided to design a logo.

The big image on the right I really liked

but I continued with other ideas

Here I was messing with the idea that the logo could just be a squid's head and the text.
I tried using 'negative space' which would later be a part of the main logo.

-David

Character Model - Update 02

Just spent a few hours detailing the head - most of the time I spent around the eye area, which I still need to change.

I know he looks a bit creepy right now, and there is some weird deformation around the cheek area, but I will get to that when I next work on him. Also the ear needs work - I'm thinkiing I might re-do it if I can't get it looking correct.

Overall I think he is coming along nicely.

-Jack

Character Model - Update 01

This is what I have of the the older character so far based on David's designs. It's taking longer than expected to sort out the polygon edge flow so the character can deform correctly when animated. I'm glad to have started early and now know how to work with the second character when I get to him.

The edgeflow is mostly sorted with the character. As you can see in the picture at the top, the character's head is detached from the body. This is for ease of both me and the animators: I can separately detail and texture the character's head when I choose to take it to a sculpting package; and for the animators, this is easier if we want to use blend shapes for facial expressions as they can export just the head and tweak, then re-import a different head with different expressions, making the pipeline a bit easier.

-Jack

Mood piece! (Western saloon)

Here is a quick test painting I did using the Cintiq computer at university. After reading the script, this is how I envisioned the Western standoff scene.

Phil, out!

Material Tests 01

I've done three different render tests:

 

Testing different materials, from right to left: glass, metal, wood, rock and vegetation/plants. These all are made using MIA_Material_X. The plant shader uses Skin Sub Surface Scatter material.

The last two pictures have a 3-point studio light setup.

-Jack

Playing with intro motion graphics!

Here is the first test I made inside After effects for the logo. This will be played after the Teesside University logo and before the animation begins.

-Phil

Hello from Inky Squid!

Hey there,

Welcome to the Inky Squid blog!
This blog is a companion site to our final year group project at Teesside University, so expect many updates in the near future.

So Far:

So far we have an idea, team roles, a completed script, and some rough concept sketches. Now it's just a case of pushing on with updating the blog with these assets, and continuing with pre-production.

Phil, Out!