Update and Conclusion of Project:

I think me and Kanika are going to be extremely relieved when this project is over. We started extremely well, but situations at home for both of us really spiralled out of control which made getting on with the project pretty hard. so, unfortunately we haven't been able to update regulary on our blog either :( We managed to salvage what we started in the last week to really concentrate on what we personalyl wanted to get out of the project and in all hoensty... it relaly helped! Like Kanika has stated already, She focussed on animation and i focused on the concept stuff. Although it's perhaps not our best pieces of work, it still gave us the final opportunity to learn skills from this project.

And although we don't haev our initial idea produced, but instead 'portions' of that bigger idea, we still feel like we did an alright job of things, considering the problems were were trying to deal with at the same time. Hopefully the next project we'll have a better chance at completing our work properly.
Here are jus ta few images i've taken of the character concept work i've been producing recently. Like i've said, not my best work, but i did quite enjoy working on it nonetheless.

Conclusion for zoo project 06/03/08

I learnt alot about my skills within animation in this project. Although I would really love being a modeller and rigger and be able to make the characters that I have designed, I have realised that I am really not blessed with those kind of skills and need to develop them alot more. I have never really seen myself as an animator however I am strongly reconsidering that pathway. I started to really enjoy animating when I had a rig that worked well, there was so much you could do with it. My only regret was not thinking of the idea sooner to use pre- set rig to really go for the animation side of things with more time I believe I could of developed my skills even more.

At the beginning Jeff and I had decided that we were going to focus on building up skills that we were not necessarily comfortable with but also incorporate ones that we liked. So the two main factors we picked were 2D concept and animation. We ended up doing to a certain extent all four areas because to get to the end sequence we would need to model and rig our characters.

I think that we started of quite well in the project but as the project went along our focus was forced elsewhere with factors concerning other parts of our lives. However were able to bring it back towards the end of the project. I think another problem we had was really leaving hardly anytime for error! I think next time there should be a week dedicated to any mistakes to see if we can fix them in time.

I always enjoy working with Jeff and this time was no different, he has a way of keeping factors more realistic and never panics!!!

Here are a few screen shots of one of the short animation tests.

Pre set character rig

This is the character rig which I have decided to use to portray willie to the best of my ability. I picked this character rig because I believed it fitted in well with the look of Jeff's character. It also had the main foundations that I wanted to use on my character.

The rig is very well done, not only does it have squash and stretch incorporated in the rig but it also has fully functional facial expressions.

Rigging and model probs..... 25/02/08

Ok so I have been using a rigging tutorial that Jeff found on the internet. Its a very good tutorial, simple to use and easy to understand. However I got to a certain point when I realised that I wouldnt be able to use this rig for my particular model. I smooth binded it a couple of times to see how it was working and it just doesnt work with the model. I feel there is to many technical problems with both the rig and the model that I have made, and at this point it is to late to start again. So what I think the best thing to do is to use a pre set rig for the purposes of the outcome of this brief and then in my own time start this character again and develop it in my own time.

pokey is nearly done.. better start the bug now :(

i'm having major problems with the eyes atm kanika so i hope your ones turn out ok? Let me know. I'm gonna have to talk to alex on monday to sort it out. I;m trying to have make an influence for the eyes... i.e. so the eyes turn and point at what i want, but for some reason the eyes keep revolving out of the head and i dunno how to fix it

Rigging.... >_<

Here is little screenshot of how my rigging is coming along. Not too bad really. Hard work though. There seems to be a glitch every now and then but it seems to sort it self out...