REPORT P02 2013/2014

CA 5

INTRODUCTION


This weekly assignment was basicly the same as last week, except that the theme was totally different.
This week we were going to create a short animation movie, were we was supposed to use one of two scenarios. From a selection of a person sitting by a table waiting for someone, or a person sitting on a bench nervous, I choosed the last one.




THE ASSIGNMENT

When I started on this assignment I had to figure out how I wanted my animation. There are several movements that is really really important to get in the scene, to actually have the movie to look interesting. 
We learned a lot of this in our classes this week, and I tried to use it as best as I could, combined with the time we actually had to do the assignment. I choosed to use the nervous/bored person as my assignment task. I started off by doing a simple environment, because it gives the scene a little more life. After I had done the environment, I started to make my reference. I choosed to do a reference of myself because I couldn't find a good one on the internet. I asked our teacher for some feedback on both the reference and my main poses(blocking), to actually get what I wanted and what should be in the final scene. This animation required movement in a still position, which was pretty hard to get as I wanted. I tried as best as I could to use my time in the best way, and to get my poses as I had them in my reference. All that I learned this week will be used as good experience for the upcoming assignments.


EDGEFLOW AND TOPOLOGY

This assignment had a pre-made rigged character to use.






SELF EVALUATION


This assignment was a challenging task to do. This because we had to do an interesting animation with a character sitting down the whole scene. I feel that there is a lot to tweake and do different in my final submission, but in another way, I feel that I did the best I could in the period of time we had. Honestly, I feel that there is just experience to take with me further on into this amazing course. We haven't had that lot of animation yet, and is just in the learning curve to get the basics, that's why we have different settings the following weeks, to get the basic animation rules and learn a lot to use in our 3 week project at the end of this semester. I feel that my final scene turned out pretty well, though there are a lot of things that could have been done different, but that is how I gain experience. We have had our feedback together in class and I think that it is a good way give the students the feedback, because the teacher can show things on the whiteboard, and explain why it should be like that or not like that. If someone have got an very good idea of something in their submission, they can share it with the other students as well, trough the teacher. 





My character sheet is going like this:


SITTING OUTSIDE PRINCIPALS OFFICE

'' This is SO boring''

''I really hope my parents are not in there with the principal''

DOOR OPENS

'' I think I heard my name''

CA4

INTRODUCTION


This weekly assignment was to create a short animation of a character pushing or lifting a heavy box.
Many challenges, but all over very exiting task!




THE ASSIGNMENT

When I started on this assignment I had in mind to actually do the lifting task, BUT after some tryouts, I decided to change over to push instead. The reason was because I couldn't do the thing I had in mind to do, but with the pushing I did what I had in mind. There were a lot of things to take in concideration when I did this assignment. The weight and line of action was some of them.


EDGEFLOW AND TOPOLOGY

This assignment had a pre-made rigged character to use.






SELF EVALUATION


This assignment was a challenge for me to do. It was a short week, but I stayed at school both thursday and friday to get it done the best way I could. I have a lot to learn when it comes to animation, and I really want to learn a lot more about it. Animation isn't my strongest side, but I will work hard to learn this properly.
Somebody needs more time than others, but that is no blocking wall for me. Over all I think my animation turned out to a OK result. I could have done a lot more to polish the finished result, but we had one week, and for me and my experience, I choosed to not mess it up more than nescessary. I am aware of the problems and things to fix im this assignment, so I will definetly fix that on my sparetime. Not because I probably have to, but because I really want to explore it more on my time off.




Here is my finished result of this assignment:

REPORT P03

REPORT   P03

Sindre Christiansen 3DAA 2013/2014

Name: Zarc
Age: 50
Nationality: American
Socioeconomic level as a child: poor
Socioeconomic level as an adult: poor
Hometown: Nevada, USA
Current residence: Nevada desert, near Area 51
Occupation: Research project for a human project done by the USA (Area 51)
Talents/skills: Strong, runs fast, can smell things from a long distance.
Relationship skills:

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Physical characteristics:

Height: 224 cm
Weight: 41 kilos
Race: Human/Alien

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Distinguishing features:

How does he/she dress? : This character has no distinguishing to use. He has been held kept in a basement all his life, and have never used clothes.

Habits: scream, easy angry, break things.
Health: Good. Non smoker.
Hobbies: No hobbies, only a dream of being free.
Style: Poor, different than other humans.
Greatest flaw:
Best quality: Kind to the people that is kind to him.
Favourite saying: ‘’I really hate this!’’

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Intellectual/mental/personality attributes and attitudes

Educational background: No graduation, has been a project for the Area 51 from he was born.

Intelligence level: Smart
Character’s short-term goals in life: Escape from Area 51.

Character’s long-term goals in life: Escape from Area 51 and be a free person as everyone else, without being wanted.

How does the character see himself/herself? : Sad, angry and confused.

How self-confident is the character? : Very self-confident.

Does the character seem to be ruled by emotion or logic or some combination thereof?

This character is ruled by emotion. He want everyone to be happy, included himself, which he’s obviously not at this moment.

What would embarrass this character most? : This character would be embarrast if someone confronted him with something he can’t give answers to.

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Emotional characteristics

Strengths/weaknesses: This character runs extremely fast, and is very clever. Daily, he works at the Area 51, with secret projects. He can read all kind of languages, but is sad and unfocussed.

Introvert or extrovert? 

How does the character deal with:

§     anger? Break things and beats up the persons that is a threat.

§     sadness? He cries for days, and pretend that nothing has happened, to look ‘’untouched’’.

§     conflict? Gets confused and doesen’t care that much.

§     change? 

§     loss? 

What motivates this character? To be given opportunities.
What frightens this character? To not get out of Area 51.
What makes this character happy? To have some time outside, and get out of the basement.
Is the character judgmental of others? No.
Is the character generous or stingy? Very generous.
Is the character generally polite or rude? Very polite.

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How the character is involved in the story

What is the character’s role in the story (Main character? Hero? Heroine? Romantic interest? Etc.) Main character
Where would he/she go on holiday? New York, USA.
What is his/her favourite food? Fresh slaughted pig.
Describe his/her home. What is it like?

The home of this character is a 20sqm basement inside the Area 51 facility. Dirty floor, and no windows. He is being held kept here when he’s not working, because of his unstable anger and emotions.

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Choose an enemy

How did the character make the enemy? This character got this enemy after a he was experimented on, by other persons at the Area 51 facility.

What is the one thing in the world he/she would avoid at any cost? That other people becomes the same experiment as himself.

Why? Because that would be a pain for the other persons.

What has he/she done already to avoid this? He has talked to the project leader at Area 51, and threaten him to not try the same experiment on other.

What would you see him/her doing in future to avoid it? He would probably kill the enemy to avoid this.

What is the one thing in the world the character would do anything to have? His freedom!

Why? Because he want to be like everyone else.

What has he/she done already to try and obtain it? Threaten the leaders at the facility.

What does he/she hope to achieve in the future? To get his freedom and live a normal life like everyone else.

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Additional notes on this character:

 Zarc is a human experiment, done by the USA, in accommodation of the Area 51 facility.

He was born in Nevada, were his mother and father lived. His father worked at the facility and his mom was a drug addict. When Zarc was born, he wasn’t given a name, but was only called ‘’the child’’. After his father died in an tragic airplane accident, his mother left him to the Area 51 facility, to give him the opportunity to live, instead of become a drug addict like his mother. Not everything went out like it was planned. In the beginning the people at the Area 51 took good care of the child, but after a while, they captured an Alien at a UFO crash site in Roswell in the 1960’s, and found out that they wanted to try to take the genes from the Alien and try it on the child. This is were he became Zarc, the human project.

INTRODUCTION

This assignment were we supposed to make an character, and give him a life story. The finished product should be 6 finished renders, with a range from low-poly clay, to smooth with texture. The assignment had different levels of work, which included research, sketches, concept, schedule etc. Many challenges underway, but really exciting and fun!

INTERPRETATION OF THE TASK

When I started on this assignment, I went straight to the internet, to find some inspiration for my character. My first thought was to create a creature that only exist in our fantasy, but then I started to think that it would be really cool to create a mix between a fantasy figure and a human. So I tried.

CONCEPT

After a lot of research and thinking, I came up with my finished concept. My character is based on a human experiment done by the USA inside the Area 51 facility in Nevada desert. This base does really excist, so I used that as a referencepoint in my character. The story behind it all is this characters father worked at the Area 51 facility, and his mom was a drug addict. When Zarc was born, he wasn’t given a name, but was only called ‘’the child’’. After his father died in a tragic airplane accident, his mother left him to the Area 51 facility, to give him the opportunity to live, instead of become a drug addict like his mother. Not everything went out like it was planned. In the beginning the people at the Area 51 took good care of the child, but after a while, they captured an Alien at a UFO crash site in Roswell in the 1960’s, and found out that they wanted to try to take the genes from the Alien and try it on the child. This is were he became Zarc, the human project of Area 51.

SCHEDULE:

RESEARCH AND WORK PROCESS

CREATIVE METHODS

When I started on the assignment, I realized that I had a lot to do, to give this character the look I really wanted. I started with creating the character in sketchbook, then made imageplanes to use as a reference when I started to model the creature in Maya. When I started on the model in Maya, my focus was to use as few polygons as possible, but also enough to get the shapes I wanted on my character.  

After I was done with my model, I choosed to put it into mudbox and create all the details there. I choosed this method to get the result I wanted on my character. Mudbox allows you to export a normalmap, which worked well on my character. First try was not that successful, but after a few tryouts it worked fine.

I also choosed to use a stamp in mudbox, this because my character has skin texture, and one of the stamp tools in mudbox allowed me to give my character the texture and details I wanted. In addition to my concept, I wanted to give my character a sign that he really belongs to the Area 51 facility, so I gave him a mark on his left breast were it says ‘’ TOP SECRET’’. I choosed this because he is a top secret human project that no one outside Area 51 knows about.

Before I sent my model into mudbox, I had to unwrap the whole mesh. I used UV texture editor in maya to do this job. Honestly I looked at some tutorials on youtube on how to unwrap a character in maya, and took a lot from there. I had learned how to do it by our tutor, but I thought it was worth a try to figure out even easier ways to do it. I couldn’t find any, so I unwrapped my model, did a layout of all my unfolded pieces, and sent it into mudbox for further details.

After the work in mudbox was done, I ended up with exporting out texture and normal maps. These was then placed on the finished and unwrapped model in maya.

ANALYSIS

The issues I had to work with in this project was many. I can start off by telling that this was a pretty difficult task to do, in the way that I had to get to a finish with both the textures and the model. I had SO many thoughts about this character when I first started, that I couldn’t even decide how he was going to turn out. Then I sat down and figured out piece by piece how things was going to look like when it was done. I started to model the character and had no serious issues with that, except that my Maya license was out of date, which was a small problem to fix. After I was done modeling, I took my model into mudbox and started to sculpt my details, which was a serious mess.

I sent my maya file to mudbox and connected the two scenes so that I could update everything with each other, that was not a good idea. I then took a copy of my finished maya model and opened it in mudbox. All model mesh was accepted, so that was no problem. In my mind I thought that I could give my character some big muscles and a high detail face, but so easy was it not going to be. The thing I had to do in mudbox was to take my original mesh at level 0 of subdivision, and fire it up to level 5-6 to get in the details. Everything seemed to go well, until I was extracting the normalmap out of mudbox.

The maya model was original low-poly, and then fired up to 6x subdivision in mudbox, so all of that amazing details was not able to fit on my level 0 maya model when it was extracted out from mudbox.

I sat three hours and tuned in fine details that I thought was going to show on my finished model, but with no luck(as said). Then I figured out that if I gave my character some fine details but in combination of color and sculpting, it would work. And it did. I painted my whole character dark brown, and gave him skin texture(not that visible in finished render due the issues with maya+mudbox), and then colored a darker color in corners and edges of the character, to give an impression that he is both dirty and has been out in rough weather and haven’t been showering for a while. Then, as mentioned over, I did an imprint on his left chest, to really say to the viewer that this character is a top secret project.

DESIGN

The design I choosed to go for in this assignment, is based on two different creatures, Alien and human. I started off with my drawings, and was pretty stuck at that part of the assignment, so I had to choose how my character should look like, and that mix between an alien and a human was really something that caught my attention. This character is thin, which people thinks that aliens are, compared with above the average of height of a human, included the basic structure of a human. I choosed to give him long and thin arms included the legs. His feets and hands is alien inspired, with my own design. I researched alien hands and feets on the internet, but couldn’t find something I really wanted, so I made something special of my own fantasy, which was a fun part.

SELF- EVALUATION

REFLECTION ON FINAL PRODUCT

My opinion on the final product is that there is probably a lot of things I could have done different, but when that is said, I’m pretty happy with my result. This is the first time I seriously use normalmaps and creating my textures in mudbox, which was a big experience for me. The character is made with only maya and mudbox, more specified a texturemap and a normalmap exported out from mudbox and placed on the main model in maya. When it comes to the unwrapping, I could have done a way more better job. Why I’m saying this is because I want to be honest to myself about it. Instead of unwrapping arms in one piece, I could have done some parts together rather than do them as a separate piece. For the texturing, I could have putted a more high detail skin texture on top of the whole character, but instead of doing that, I used a lot of time in mudbox, to get what I really was looking for. That was my priority with this assignment, and that is a big part of this projects, to make priorities and be satisfied with them.

Overall I’m satisfied with my product and gain experience from each task we do. I have learned very much during this project, and that is really good to bring into the future. On my blog I’m also going to post an image of the model in mudbox compared to the normalmaps on the model in maya, so the readers can compare and see the difference.  

During this two week assignment/project, I followed my schedule for each day. Some days was I even further than the schedule was, so I feel that my time planning went very well.

Here is my final product;