Blockouts

TREES

Having scribbled out a shoddy picture in photoshop with Dan, looking at how we should frame the characters in the opening scene, I blocked out the basic tree shape that arced over the three characters as they run into shot. We took the tree block out and within the animation menu in maya gave the model a nonlinear deformer, which allowed me to animate the mesh to curve up, to quickly create a second shape for the tree.

GRAVES

Below I made some graves that we could use to block out some of the environment in the graveyard scene. They are basic, but we intend to add more elaborate graves with in the scene for a more elaborate environment.

FIRE EXIT

I went on to block out the 1^st corridor room in the ride, where the floor gives way and splits the girls up. The room is very basic and is meant to be quite bland, like a typical lame ghost train, so it’s just rectangular with a dugout floor for the cart and a fire exit off to the side. The fire exit is hardly seen, but its there as an extra light source and to add to the element of lamenss, so the blockout is more or less close to the final version.

STALLS

I blocked out the stalls for the outside scene, using Anna’s original art work as reference. It’s very basic but dose the job of allowing us to position them within shots, so we can frame the characters.

COFFIN

I blocked out a coffin that will be in the graveyard scene.

Wellys! I like that word, welly welly welly!

I went on to model a generic boot, which all the characters would have. I think the basic design works well and looks nice! The colours will vary per character to fit with their colour schemes. I had to make sure the mesh for the boot would match up to the folds in the proxy model of the boot, so it would skin properly when it is referenced in later.

Mausoleum

I wanted to model the mausoleum from the graveyard scene first, as it was a defining piece from the scene, and once I had that done I would be able to use that as a reference to scale the other environmental objects. I feel like the model is in keeping with the “chunky” style, and I will be adding the doors to it soon.

Cho's head 1st attempt

Having finished the hand I went on to attempt to model the head of the Cho character. I followed a tutorial similar to that of the hand tutorial, which roughly guides you to create all the necessary basic geometry. It was tough, as getting the basic geometry done well is vital to having a good finished model, and I felt that it wasn’t coming together. Having been out of practice with maya for a while pre-hand, I felt I would benefit by modelling some environmental objects prior to Cho’s head, as a head can be quite a complex piece of geometry.

Hand

Having spent some time away from maya over the holliday I wanted to jump back into it with something that would be a challange. Also, Dan needed the hand modelled asap so he could take the model and break it up for the proxy models for the three characters. I modelled a hand that all three of us could use for each character. This was to save time, rather then me, Anna and Jake model a hand each. Our style is “chunky” so I followed a really helpful tutorial which resulted with this hand.

further character development

Above are some sketches i did to play around with preportions of the body and head. However the group felt like the characters shouldn't be too exagerated, as opposted to being stylised, as we all had the same vision already as to how the characters looked. So it was just a matter of refining the previous designs, and to give them a more stylistic feel.

So here are the final designes that the whole group are happy with. Befor the characters looked to real, as Mike pointed out, and i do think that he was right. The edited versions are more softer and have more vulnrability to them, which Anna Dan and Jake are happy with, as am i. I felt that most of the change was made in the faces of the girls. I gave them a more bean shaped eye, which i think was the most lifelike feature originally, and straight away they gained a more doll like feel to them. i gave them smaller chubbier hand and little feet to play around with preportions also.

I asked if i could be the one to draw up the character concept sheets for annas characters, using her original designs as reference, which are shown above. In the meantime the whole group spent alot of time developing the story together, to something that we are all happy with as it currently stands. We all we'er happy to axe one of the characters so we could use Dan's design he made for his original pitch. His original character concept is shown below.