Modelling 2: Legs and feet

After sorting out the leg to extrude out the foot I then did the following for the foot here:

1) Extruded downwards to create the ankle/area for the foot to be extruded.

2) Selected the new polygon and extruded outwards to create the foot.

I found after stage 2 that the foot looked a little bit off so I went into vertex mode and adjusted the vertices to where I wanted them using the move tool.

3) For the leg area, I went into edge mode, selected the leg area (dragged across), I then went into the connect dialogue box and used the slider to position the knee area according to where I wanted it also, using the move tool i pulled the newly made edges across to give a slight bend in the leg, which will make it easier for me in the rigging stage for positioning the joints where i want them.

Modelling 1: basic structure

For the character modelling, I thought of a few ways of how to go about it, but in the end I chose a method I used in the past to model a basic biped.

1)I created a box, made the size 40x40x40, this inital box is the head, I added a editable poly modifier to this box.

2) Using the extrude tool and the scaling tool I created the neck and shoulder blades then extruded downwards and still using the scaling tool, to create the chest, torso, hips and groin area, after doing this I went into edge mode connected a new edge right down the middle of the model and deleted half of the model to make it easier to make the character.

3)The leg was made in exactly the same way, except I only extruded it out a small way, then having the polygon still selected I used the move tool to size the leg accordingly.

4) I went into edge mode and rotated the edges of what will be the ankle so that the polygon face is now parallel to where the floor will be, I did this to make my life easier for making the feet.

5)I then resized the leg using the scale tool and using edge mode and polygon mode accordingly.

6) I added a symmetry modifier and turbosmooth to the model, just to see at this stage how it looked.

Lipsync Tutorial, Fatboy

This is the tutorial for lipsyncing using the fatboy model.

I used the "Jollytosh old chap" dialogue for this one and I was quite happy with the outcome i managed to get from it. The annoying thing I have found is, is that although before going through the process of the full facial morphing, I did work on covering up his teeth by pulling out the face a bit here and there, but yet on the final render his teeth are still popping out!!!

Also another thing which i have noticed for myself personally, is that the movement in the lips doesnt quite fit the OL point when saying jOLly, but apart from that I'm reasonably happy with it considering this my first go at lipsyncing, there's only one way to go from now and that's up!

Oh well, you learn from your errors and so here he is, I think to have a practice, I may create my own dialogue and stick that up at some point to see how that looks once my own character is finished as a sort of animation test.

Storyboard??

I still haven't fully completed the storyboard from rough to final form, as I keep tweaking and refining points in the story, but the final one should be up here before the end of the week. But while I am working on finishing the storyboard, I will start to work on my model from this point on as this will be the most time consuming and complicated aspect of the module. If I screw up the model, whether it's in the modelling stage, rigging stage or skinning stage the animation is going to suffer, so I will work on the model and alongside the storyboard i will start to write a small script for the characters to follow.

Front and side of the character

These drawings will be what I use as a guideline for modelling my model, I won't follow the drawing exactly as knowing myself Iam SURE I will end up changing things as I go along! But nonetheless they will be valuable templates to have.

With the leg on the side drawing, I have deliberately made it kink towards the knee a little bit, as this will help with the skinning process once the modelling is complete, I may not have it as kinked as it looks here, but slightly bent I definitely will model it that way for ease with placing the knee joint where I wish for it to go.

Facial sketches

These are just showing me experimenting with different facial features using particular mouth shapes which would be used to make up words phonetically (I think that's the right word to explain this situation!), very rough and very basic. Im not a very good drawing artist, so I use this process of drawing as more of a way to visualise the character in my head of how they can be modelled. From doing these facial sketches I decided upon not using visible eyebrows but just to manipulate the mesh around where the eyebrow would be to show expression as I felt having eyebrows on these characters wouldn't look right, I also decided that I will set up some teeth and have a fully animating mouth section, perhaps rather than just syncing the mouth to audible sounds, I may spend some time in writing a small script with actual dialect which will be a fun challenge!

First Sketches

With the following image shows my first rough ideas with the characters appearances I wish to have for my animation. I will have three characters in total, but all with this similar style of body just differing sizes and heights, which can be quite easy to do once I have built the first character.

This first image is faint but shows the original sketches, the bigger guy is the guy who is going to be fooled by the smaller guy, the other guy who is going to get fooled will also be a short guy, but perhaps with slightly differing features to help distinguish the characters.