Transcription part 3: Research

I was researching objects and characters that I felt will help me with my Transcription animation.
The character I looked at for inspiration for appearance is Wimpy from Popeye. Even though technically he is not a drunk he is just a man looking for someone to buy him a burger today and he will pay them back on Tuesday, his appearance carries a drunk like expression I was looking for. His face always smiling and his eyes closed and always looked relaxed.

Wimpy








What I also notice when researching Wimpy is that I need to use some cloth deformers to give his clothes a sense of baggyness which will prove a bit of a challenge for me but it won't stop me from animating my character.


As mentioned in my previous post I imagine the setting of my short in a theater so i have research what a theater stage looks and also I have looked at a door prop ofr just a door since that too plays a role in my short.
Theater Stage










Door

Maya Tutorial part 9: Cartoon Character Rig

Today I have just finished inserting the rigs in my character.

I first had to mark them out by using planes to make placing the rigs a bit easier. I notice i need to practice this because while I was placing the rigs I discovered that they were not setting right, like some of them are not in dead center of the mesh and some are too near to the edge of the mesh but this technique is very useful.

Markers

Front

Side

Maya Tutorial part 9: Lipsync and Car Modeling

For the Maya tutorial I used a soundtrack from the 11 seconds club and i did a lipsync animation test to see how it looks with mouth movements to facial expression.
The animation is played three times, first will show the jaw bounce, second will be the mouth movements and the last one will be the detailing to it like the movement of tongue, eyebrows, eyes etc.




For the car Maya tutorial I was defining the mold of the of the car and adding detail to the front and rear bumper.

Maya Tutorial part 8: UV Mapping

For the past few days I was finishing UV mapping my character and it was not easy.

Character UV



The first part I have done was the Trousers. First I had to add a planner and delete one of the side. Then I had to do some UV separation on the side of the leg to the hip, move it. It was then a matter of unfolding and rearranging the UVs. Once that was done I then attached the two separate UVs and mirroring the modeling and flipping its UV and connecting them to the previous one. I did this way of laying out the UVs on most of the body parts on my character.

Trousers Belt UV Map






Shirt UV Map




Shoes UV Map




Head Eyebrow UV Map






On a side note while sorting out he UVs in the hair I notice4 i have messed up the geometry but I was able to fix it by moving the vertices's and adding a new edge.
Hair UV Map




I learnt that UV mapping is quite difficult to do but it is necessary to texture your character better.

Transcription part 2: New Idea: The Drunk(working on title)

After talking to Phil about me using the music O Fortuna, he told me that the music has already been used by many people to death. However he liked the idea of using music as a way to describe a character, so he suggested some music I could use for my transcription.
There was one piece of music that really caught my attention which is Camille Saint Saens' 'Carnival of the Animals, The Elephant'


When I heard this music I'd imagined a drunk, dopely getting home. During his journey he topples left and right, dances a bit as well and mistakenly believes that some objects are people. Also he is wearing a hat that might sometimes blow off.
The purpose of this animation is just focusing on the character for his silliness and movement and the type of facial expression he makes.
I also imagine this as a pantomime where the Drunk has a spot light on him and he sometimes interacts with the audience by approaching them with a smile and going back on his path.
The entire animation is silent the only noise is the music playing.
It will end with the Drunk getting home safe and sound. He will have some trouble opening the door like putting the key in the key hole. When he finally opens the door he does one last goodbye and closes the door.
The breaking the forth wall aspect is meant to be subtle, as in he does these actions that implies that he knows he is being watched by us but in reality he doesn't.
Leave feedback if you think this is a good idea, and leave some comments on how I should approach this idea.