Rain Particles

I had to implement rain for my project to represent the sprinklers going off when Norman triggers the fire alarm. The effect worked better than I had hoped, Ive never touched on particles before and hadn't realized how easily achievable rain was to create.

Scene Developments

The presentation of the cinema is an important part of the story, I created these examples to demonstrate how the atmosphere of the cinema will be presented to the viewer but more importantly the character who has to live through it. The chair on the right has stains which were created using Photoshop brushes found on DeviantArt called 'Coffee stain brushes', I'm using these brushes to create wear and tear on the seats.

Props

Adding the use of Props to establish the cinema criteria

Scene Developments

This is the scene of the cinema itself, a lot of the animation will take place within this scene so I wanted to get the specifics as accurate as possible, I have been to many cinemas and researched the aesthetics of the cinema. Cinema perspective, lighting, style and spacing. 

Scene Developments

Some scene development which will see the character entering the cinema door once its finished. I'm in the process of texturing the UV map for this scene so we'll soon see some colour development soon.

Finished Model

Finished with the modeling, texturing, rigging, now its just about getting the rest of the work up together, so far so good.

Minor Alterations

The braces on the model were previously separate objects from the model which were 'combined' and then skinned to the joints, however when the controller for the back was bent the braces would transform within the mesh of the body as seen in the above image. A painful lenghty time then had to be spent modeling the braces into the mesh of the model itself shown above, you can see the deformation is not a problem in the last image, problem sorted.

Textured Character

UV's and Textures

Unwrapping the UV's isn't fun. I didn't enjoy unwrapping but i have learnt some new tricks from it, I managed to work with them and successfully get the result I was looking for shown in the next post.

BlendShapes

A selection of blend-shapes that will be used to capture the characters emotions, these are a few of the many I will have to produce 

Rigging

Now I have began to rig my character which I enjoy oddly enough, I've found I'm quite happy to sit down and rig away despite many peoples dissatisfaction for it. Rather straight forward rig, RP_Solver for the arms and legs, Pole vector constraints for the elbows and knees., SC_Solver from the ankle to the end of the foot. Orient constraints for the wrist and the spine controls to control the body bending.

Model Completed

So heres my completed model. I'm pleased with the outcome and has referenced my concept better than I imagined

Set Driven Keys

So heres some references for my set-driven key progress, Ive been paying particular attention to the 'Package man' rig, Ive taken everything away and I'm studying the topology over the hand to understand how the edge loops around the fingers create a good deformation when the fingers curl. I find a lot of communication comes from the hands of the character so I'm trying to establish good loops to create better deformation when set driven keys are animated. 

3D Character Development

The style of the character starts to come together when the feet, arms and head have more time spent improving the quality of the model. At this stage I didn't want to divert too far from concept drawings of my character. 

3D Character Development

The hands and the feet were then re-modeled to replace the blocked out hands and feet 

Facial 3D development

Now I can take the time to make areas of the model better, Ive removed the template ears and created new ones to match the style, also I have created some eye-brows that will emphasize the characters facial expressions better. 

Now the character is more or less fully limbed areas of the character can now be 'worked at'.

Blocking character

More character blocking, trying to define shapes to work detail into

Blocking character

I began to build a frame to work on, once the character had some shape i could begin to develop areas and define them 

Storyboards

Here is the storyboard which underline this project, it is likely to develop over time but the foundations have been set.

Facial concepts

I started to create facial expressions concepts, hopefully should help throughout the character creation process  

Character expressions

More concept work for the development of Norman  

Character Specifics

These were the specific details that i wanted 'Norman' (the name of my character) to have. The different pieces of detail combine to define what kind of a person he is.

Character Development

So i'm trying to design a 'weedy' - 'nerdy' character this is how i went about it. I wanted a Hunchback to make it look like he spent long hours on the computer (arched back). Inspiration from 'URS' which evolved into a nerdy strong looking nerd and then i slimmed him down and made him more twiggy (more fragile)

Character creation

So better late than never, im attempting to blog everything Ive done up till now, im hoping it wont take long, Ive found time to attempt to post as much as i can.

So this is the development for my 3rd year major project, 'Inter-mission'. Through the development of posts you'll start to understand the plot-line to the story.

A quick synopsis to define the project: An unfortunate series of events that ruins a visit to the cinema.

I began by drawing characters to define the style for the project