ひらめきのある

I finished up a couple of pieces for a collaboration with a games student.  The main deliverables were two full body character sprites, intended for use in a text-based cutscene.

The cutscene might not have made it into the final version of the game, but my art will be used in the game that will be at the student showcase.

I also was to provide a basic background for the scene.  Due to time constraints, the background was only able to be completed to a flat colour stage.

The idea was for it to be a medieval town square, fitting the setting for the game. 

So through some ongoing skill building in UE4, I’m going to be writing a little process blog on creating destructible meshes.

To start, I imported a mesh.  Our little bear friend here is a willing volunteer.

After the mesh is in the scene, I right clicked the static mesh, and selected Create Destructible Mesh.

Here comes the fun part.  Which also looks a little morbid when working with a character mesh.

Here, you can adjust a lot of the settings that customises how the mesh is fractured.  You can completely do this by hand outside of UE4, but the random seeds generated in the program here are sufficient for what I want.

After some adjustments, click Fracture Mesh.

I also enabled impact damage, since I want to see if I can use the gun to destroy the mesh.

I then save and close this window.

After this, I click and drag the DM version of the bear mesh into the current scene.

For the sake of this exercise, I didn’t bother with applying a material to this object.  However, you can do this pretty easily with the tools in the side panel here:

Here, you can even apply a material to the inside of the mesh for when it explodes.

Then in the physics panel, I select simulate physics and uncheck start awake.

Start awake would mean that fractures as soon as the scene starts.  We want the mesh to start asleep so that it remains intact until interacted with.

Another fun part of this is particle effects.

You can easily plug in a particle effect as well as an audio file to accompany it.

Here is the final result.

Not the most fun topics in regards to my portfolio project, but certainly important ones.

Planning my own project has been a rather simple task.  I am creating a static 3D posed and textured model.  As such, my workflow is quite linear which makes me lean more towards a waterfall methodology for managing my project.

The waterfall process is sequential, and relies on each step being completed before being able to move onto the next, which is true for my model.  I cannot move on to UVs or texturing without completely finishing my sculpting.  I could potentially use aspects of agile if I really need to (eg. going back and adding model detail when I’ve already moved on to UVs), but this would cause issues and make me redo work.  So I would only consider this if it were absolutely necessary. 

For a more complex project, such as a full animation or anything involving a fellow team, agile is often more useful due to its flexibility. 

Here is my current time plan for my project:

This shows how the steps in my workflow don’t overlap and are completed one after the other.

The other major aspect of my project plan was my publishing method.  I took inspiration from my research and my favourite models online such as the following:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oW3qk

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/1Xao8

These models were posted online using Marmoset Viewer, which allows people to interact with the model by rotating and zooming in and out like a viewport.  While I won’t be using the exact same publishing method (because Marmoset costs money), I will be using a similar one - Sketchfab.

I feel like this is the best way to present a static 3D model as opposed to an offline render of the model as a simple image.

Sketchfab is also a viable publishing option due to its popularity and recent uptake of VR support.  I can also embed the model onto other websites such as my Artstation page, this blog, etc. 

In addition to this, Sketchfab supports PBR based materials.  This gives me a lot of freedom to get my textures looking exactly the way I want them to.

By using a combination of Sketchfab and embedding to websites, I can make sure my model reaches a wide audience.  This will mainly be the artistic audiences on both Sketchfab and Artstation.  

References:

Agile & waterfall methodologies – A side-by-side comparison. (2013, September 22). 

It’s that time of the trimester again. KPIs! Woo!

Each time we do these, I appreciate how good they are at reassuring me that I’m not terrible at things.

I was originally concerned about my work ethic this trimester because I haven’t been stressed out or pushing myself as hard as I’m used to.  As a result, I put room for improvement.  But as it turns out, I’m far more successful in that category than I give myself credit for.  My own self assessment in work ethic has always been a bit skewed by my own personality and experiences.  Something I need to remind myself of is that being so stressed that it affects my work does not equal a healthy work ethic.  If I’m getting my work done on time (and sometimes even earlier than the deadline), then I’m doing well.

For both positive attitude and communication skills, I thought I was successful.  I know I have improved a lot in these areas during this course.  Even when things go wrong, it doesn’t shake my confidence that our projects will be completed to the best of our abilities.  I have also communicated well.  The main thing I need to work on is remembering to notify the group when I finish something and make important updates/uploads to the group drive.

When it comes to time management skills, I initially put down room for improvement.  My reasoning for this was that while I made good time plans, I didn’t really look at them very often.  However, I have been sticking to them quite well regardless.  So I think that successful is more accurate here.  Being more thorough in my planning and updating my progress on my time plan would help me get closer to being masterful here.

I think I have been successful when it comes to problem solving skills.  This trimester has been full of that already with learning how to use Zbrush.  A lot of my process so far has been trying to fix things, with Google sometimes not being the biggest help.

Acting as a team player has also been something I have done well in, and I have certainly come a long way since the start of this degree.  I am a lot better at compromising in a lot of areas during the production process such as artistic ideas as well as workflow decisions.

My own self confidence is probably the area where I have improved the most.  My lack of stress and anxiety over the many projects this trimester is probably a side effect of this.  I have been happy to try completely new programs like Zbrush (and later, I’ll be working a lot with Unreal Engine) that I know nothing about, and confident that I will be able to manage my time properly to produce work that is up to standard.

I have also been successful in learning and accepting criticism.  I find this is easy to do when working in a group situation, too.  All I care about is that we are able to finish with an end result that we are proud to hand over to PCH.  If that means I am told that I need to improve my skills in certain areas, that’s fine by me.  Obviously, as long as the criticism is actually constructive and helpful. :P

Lastly, I also think I have been successful in both my flexibility and my ability to work well under pressure.  A level of adaptability is rather necessary for group projects such as ours, since to an extent I’m not in control of my deadlines.  I also need to be able to go back and make changes to my work based on suggestions from others in the group.  I have also been managing my own stress levels really well due to being more confident in my work.  The real test will be towards the end of the trimester when everything needs to be wrapped up at once.

tikittTo put it very simply, Zbrush is a digital sculpting tool. You can create 3D models through a process that feels a lot more like working with real clay than polygons.  But you can also use Zbrush to illustrate, texture, retopologise, and more.

As I’ve been working with Zbrush, I’ve come to realise that it’s a very powerful piece of software.  You can really get a lot out of it once you learn how to navigate all the menus.  Naturally, there are a lot.

At this point in time, I think that modelling is what I would like to specialise in, and Zbrush is a great tool for that.

In this blog, I’ll be giving a rundown on the workflow I’ve figured out so far.  There is a lot to cover, but at this stage I’m mainly going to talk about the sculpting process.  I’ll likely cover ZRemesher for retopo in a later post.

For my current project, I started off with Zspheres.  These are useful as hell.  The best way for me to explain these is that they are are similar to a wireframe for clay sculpting.  They offer a base for detailed sculpting.

The process is pretty simple.  Once one Zsphere is created, you just click and drag to make more from that origin.  You can also preview your mesh at any time by pressing A.

The easy way for me to understand it is like the construction of a ball jointed doll.

Here’s a doll body next to the Zsphere body I made.

Dollfie Dream doll bodies sourced from Plastikitty.

It’s at least a little similar... Right...?

At this point, the models can often look a bit goofy.  The main thing here is not really looks as it is proportions and structure. 

At this stage, I had to make sure I was certain I wanted to move onto the sculpting phase.  Once you convert this to a polymesh, there’s no going back. 

For me, the result was this.

Now I had polygons to work with! Yay!

For me, it’s now onto the really fun bit: Details.

I don’t really have a set way of sculpting (not sure if any artist has a real formula for this), it’s more just playing with the tools and finding out what gets me the correct result.

Another helpful thing to do is separate areas of the mesh using polygroups.  I made sure to do this as I started sculpting so that when I needed to remesh what I was working on, it didn’t affect the rest of the model.

Remeshing is yet another thing to explain.

Sculpting in Zbrush is basically just pushing around polygons and their vertices.  Particularly when using tools like the move brush, this can cause really ugly stuff.

For example:

Cool!

A lot less cool.

Now you can use the Dynamesh tool to fix this, but in my case that caused issues around the edges of the model.  Instead, I used the auto ZRemesher tool.

One click later, the mesh doesn’t look as terrible. It’s very useful when you work heavily on a particular area and need the polygons to be redistributed evenly across the area.

Right now, I am working on the head for my character.  A very useful tool here was the insert sphere brush.  I needed eyes to sculpt the face around, and another one-click-solved issue.

Here is my progress so far.  I’ve mainly been using the clay buildup, smooth, and move brushes to get this general shape.  It’s now onto experimenting with other tools in order to get finer detail for the fur.

These are the basics I’ve learnt so far.  I’ll likely do another blog or two when I’ve gotten a good understanding of more advanced sculpting and manual use of the ZRemesher tool!

Edit:  Also, a really good tutorial I’ve been following in regards to getting used to ZBrush is this:

Progress slowed a little this week after being sick :/

But! I did manage to get something important done ahead of schedule and, while doing so, brushed up on some skills in regards to UV unwrapping.

After finishing up with the base model for the bag, I did a quick unwrap which looked like this.

It was overall kind of okay, but the metal clasp on the bag was very stretched which was far more evident when I applied the grid texture...  Which I initially forgot to do entirely.

After talking to some of the people from our group I realised I had forgotten a very important button.

This one. Reset peel.

So I went back and reset the peel on all of the pieces in my UV and it immediately fixed most of my problems.  All I had to do then was rearrange some overlapping geometry and repack it into the map space. Aaaaand....

Much better.

It will be hard to include images for this post since some of it is in regards to the new PMH logo that I don’t believe we are able to share at this point.

At this point in our project, we have consolidated most of the visual designs.  This includes Stitches the bear, a car, bag, building blocks, and a few other background props.  

This was what our moodboard for the project looked like:

Obviously, bright colours was something we have kept in mind throughout our work so far.  This was for two reasons.  First, it helps tie in our work with the bright colours of the new logo we have been given.  In addition to this, it helps to provide a very happy and child friendly feel to the project, which is important for this brand.

Something that I worked on personally for design was the bag that Stitches will be carrying.  Here is the final design with some colour variations:

For this design, I was trying to keep in mind what a classical doctor’s bag might look like.  That is what lead to the clasp opening with the metal frame.  I also opted for a more curved design as opposed to something more briefcase like in order to stick with the idea of having objects with softer, curved silhouettes as this would be more appealing to both children and parents.

The colors chosen for these variations were to try and symbolise ideas related to the hospital.  The red represents a typical red cross.  I eventually decided against this because it felt a little too clinical.  The purple design links directly to the PMH Foundation because the main purple in their logo and design work is a dark purple.  Finally, the green was chosen as a cheerful, bright colour.  It represents health, and actually ties in with the colour of the new building.

We feature a map in our video which has also been designed with our theme and brand in mind:

The simplicity of this map as well as the use of the colur red to denote the path is reminiscent of a cartoon treasure map.  This will hopefully be playful and help in appealing to our target audience

We have also taken considerations audio wise to help complement our designs.  If we have music in the final product, we aim for it to be fun and lighthearted.    This ties in with the kid friendly visual theme we have.  In addition to this, our voice over is planned to be a woman with a friendly sounding voice.  Considering that a large portion of donors are women and parents, this seems appropriate in appealing to this group of people while maintaining the softness and overall welcoming feeling we are aiming to create with our advertisement.

When we eventually move into the animation phase of our project, we aim to emulate a style similar to Pocoyo.

The animation style is quite simple and would appeal well to children.

At this point in time, I feel as though what we have created so far is appropriate for our purpose and client.  The main challenge from this point on is to successfully translate all of these ideas into a 3D environment.

I maaay have forgotten about blogs.  Ooops.

But that does mean there’s a lot to talk about.  So for this one, I’ll do a basic rundown of what is going on.

First of all is the main group production project.  We are creating a promotional video for PMH’s rebranding to Perth Children's Hospital Foundation.  For this, I’ve been put in charge of the texturing process, which I’m pretty happy about.  This is something I’m comfortable with and it also gives me the opportunity to develop my skills, especially in Quixel.  This will be beneficial to my other two projects.

My personal project is just a model.  I want to sculpt a nice detailed character with complex textures.  I’ve collated many images onto a moodboard for this:

https://padlet.com/110724/hynj7jnard0f

The overall idea for the character is a kyuubi/nine tails character with a sword, preferably in a pose that suggests motion.  For this, I’ll be using both Zbrush and Quixel.  I’m looking forward to learning how to get the most out of these two pieces of software.  I feel like learning these will definitely help me build on asset creation skills - which is something I am considering as my specialisation.

Finally, there is the major CIU project.  For this, I have joined a team making a Myst-inspired puzzle game.  It is to be set in a Dieselpunk world.  There is only myself and one other animation student in this project, so we will have a lot of say in what the final assets end up looking like.  In the early development, we have come up with general ideas on what each level might look like and a theme.  What I was able to contribute was an idea for an abandoned underground civilisation inspired by glow worm caves.  I have a moodboard for this too:

https://padlet.com/110724/xq380onyo68y

Now here’s a blog specifically written to satisfy an LO.

Making cool cloud things for a realtime project.  Low poly, simplistic, plain objects. They’ll likely just have a flat white texture, and the shader will do the rest.

They’re basically just made out of cubes.  I’ll likely collapse them into single meshes after I’ve decided I’m happy with the shapes.

I feel like there’s not much else to say on this.

----

Project update.

I’m really looking forward to handing this in... Good lord.

While I’m going to save most of the self reflection to my post mortem, I have to say that time got away from me when it came to the 3D aspect of this project.  Which isn’t a surprise.  This seems to happen to ever 3D project involving animation I’ve had thus far.  It’s usually the rigging and animation phase that totally ruins my plans, too.

Not sure how to solve this.  My main thought is to ask for more lessons on 3D animation next trimester, since I realise how little I actually know about the animation tools in 3ds Max.

It also doesn’t help that 3ds Max lags in animation when the textures are visible.  So I actually have to turn them off to animate.  Unhelpful, as I am animating my textures...

As for 2D, I’m almost completely done. One and a half scenes left to do the lineart and colours for huzzah!

Once again, however, I feel like the animation phase is so rushed that there’s no time for real feedback on my work.  

I also realise that I like animation the least out of most of the production pipeline :D  Mainly because of the stress.  I used to hate rigging a lot but, well, it’s palatable now.

I feel like I’m in the calm before the storm.  I haven’t panicked yet but I feel like it’s riiiight around the corner. 

It’s currently the end of week 8.  So I’ve got three weeks of project time left. ... Which is actually a huge relief since my brain continuously thinks it’s a week ahead.

Another huge load of my mind is actually finding a couple of audio students to help out on my project.  Work on that is supposed to commence this coming week.  I’ve been told it shouldn’t take too long.  So! Hopefully all goes well in that respect, since there’s literally nothing I can do to control that (;´Д`)

As for actual work stuff, I’ve been working on some more assets for other projects.  One of these is Karl’s space themed board game.  I did up a test of a background for him.

(I have no idea why, but when I upload this image, the colours are far more vibrant than how it displays in Photoshop.)

I am rather concerned about how spacescapes will actually print.  The final files are in CMYK, but I know I’ve always had difficulty with this in the past.

In fact, getting the right colour profile for this was tedious as all hell.  Some render functions in Photoshop aren’t available in CMYK mode, eg. lens flare.  As we all know, you can’t have space without lens flares.  This meant having to create my spacescape in RGB, convert to CMYK, and then use levels to readjust the colours so they actually didn’t look terrible and washed out.  In the process, the image had to be flattened, too, since it didn’t work if I tried to retain the layers.

Photoshop almost gives 3ds Max a run for its money when it comes to being quite a finicky program.  Almost.

Another project I’ve started to work on is visual assets for our CIU project.  We are creating a game set inside a museum.  When you enter, the images displayed on the walls are of sexualised comic book women.  Eventually inside, you come across a button.  When this is pressed, all the images change and become male characters drawn in the same poses.  It’s linked to our talks of gender and representation in our CIU classes.  

Due to the society we live in, this will make a lot of people uncomfortable.  We want people to think about why they accept these representations of women and are so off put by men in the same situations.

I’ve completed one of my four drawings for this project so far.  I have to say, it’s been quite a challenge.  I’m not all that good at drawing males.  It’s also quite an interesting task to replicate drawings that have questionable anatomy when you yourself don’t have a good grasp on it all to begin with.  But I am pretty impressed with what I’ve done so far.

Here’s the image my first drawing is based upon:

And here’s a hint on what mine looks like:

If it weren’t for how self conscious I am about my own drawing skills, I’d actually be very excited to watch people react to this game.

An absolutely thrilling subject for this blog - workflows for handling asset data!

I’ll mainly be talking about the method I use in particular which is basically just a million subfolders + incremental saves.

I’ve always been pretty organised when it comes to managing folders for uni (not so much at home sometimes...), since I make sure to categorise everything into appropriately named folders.  As well as folders inside those folders.

Here’s an example of just my production folder.  This contains all the goodies for my current animations.  I’ve tried to separate everything as much as possible.  I’ve also made sure to keep 2D and 3D assets in completely different folders of their own.  

Naturally, this probably wouldn’t be up to scratch for a team based project.  Since this is solo, my folder set up is really just for my own sanity.  While it is well labelled for my use, it may not be too easy for a complete stranger to navigate.  This is something I’m aware of, and would likely structure things differently for a team project - as evident from last trimester.

Something else that is very important - which I never even considered until starting this course - keeping multiple versions of files!

Thanks to 3ds Max having an option called “increment on save”, every time I hit Ctrl+S, I get a completely new file with another number at the end.  This is very very important.  It means if you royally screw yourself, you can easily go back to a functioning file.  I did this a lot during my modelling process before doing things like collapsing and adding big new features.  It’s even more helpful in rigging because, well...  Something WILL go wrong at some point during that process. 

That’s why this happened:

Now, this might be considered a little overkill.  But it has saved me many times.  Even though some of the files are only minutes apart (I have a good habit of saving very often), a lot can go wrong in that timeframe while rigging.

Naturally, it’s wise to go back and delete old versions that are not needed anymore.  But when you have the luxury of a lot of storage space (still have 465BG free ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) , I often leave this until the project is finished.

Then of course, there’s backups. Lots of backups.

Which reminds me, I’m going to do another one now.

I usually keep two backups of my uni work files.  One on my home computer, and another on Google Drive.

---

For something more fun:

I never look forward to these. However, I’ve come a long way since last time I’ve had one of these meetings - which I’m very happy about!

Last time, I very much underestimated most of my own abilities.  This time, I was about on track apart from two where I actually thought I was doing better.

This is a huge step for me, since I usually have no real confidence in my own abilities.  I’d much rather be perhaps a little overconfident in a few areas than hate myself in, like, all of them.

For all bar two, I thought I had successful application of each KPI.

The others were work ethic, and adaptability.

I totally understand why I am not quite yet masterful in my ability to be flexible and adapt throughout the course of a project and that’s because, well, I am mainly doing a solo project where I kind of have full control over how I do things and when.  No real flexibility challenges there.

When it comes to work ethic, I realise that I’m not yet masterful - though I’d say I am close.  Over the years when going through many difficulties outside of education, it’s really only been my sometimes over the top work ethic that keeps me from giving up. I think it will likely be challenged more when it comes to the major project towards the end of the degree.  Y’know, when it’s been like 4 months and I want to tear my hair out.  <3

In other news, rigging.  Oh joy.

I built the bones and the main structure of my wyvern rig yesterday.  Today, comes setting up controllers.  As in the part which can turn into a complete catastrophe :D To be honest, I’m looking forward to trying to work it out.  I figure it shouldn’t be as bad as last trimester...  I hope.

Here’s what I have so far.  The fact that it actually resembles my character’s model gives me hope.

Taking a little break from theory stuff to talk about collaboration work.

Over the weekend, I did my first piece for one of the game student’s project.  This one was a building based board game with a dieselpunk style.

(It was nice since I was able to get some extra use out of my new Bamboo Spark for the initial design process.)

The first job I took on for this was to create the player tokens.  They were to look like flags that could exist in this fictional universe.  I got to bust out Illustrator for the first time in over a year.

I took a lot of inspiration from old wartime flags, specifically of old Soviet Union flags.

Originally, the tokens were to be rectangular in shape and measuring 25x20mm.  Most of them ended up red, black, and yellow in colour scheme.

After some feedback, the final results were actually circular.  I also adjusted the backgrounds of the flags so each had a different colour.  This gives more contrast between each piece, which is rather important since they are quite small.

A test print was done to make sure they fit visually with the scoreboard.

I think they turned out quite well.  I’m looking forward to seeing the final high quality print product.

Fun topic.

I’ll be addressing it in a more casual way by discussing what I have done so far in my own project.  

Naturally, the workflow I have implemented for my solo project is a little less structured than last trimester since I’m working alone.  Structure in pipelines is a lot more crucial when working with a team, as it helps to keep everyone on track and understand where the project is headed.

I’ve been working in a much more flexible way than I did last year.  I’ve been working on multiple tasks at a time instead of trying to completely finish one before starting another.  It has certainly been a lot better.  Not only does it feel like I’m making more progress each day, but I also don’t go crazy trying to force myself to do something specific I might not even be in the right mindset for.

So far, I’ve stayed relatively on the schedule I set for myself.  I’ve been using a Gantt chart (my old enemy) as a way of keeping track of progress as well as deadlines.

Yay Google sheets.

Green shows what I have completed so far.  The very light green is used to show what is almost done.  Orange is to be started.

I did not yet start on the UVs for my main model yet as I don’t want to attempt something that important off campus just in case all hell breaks loose.  So, instead I worked on my 3D environment over the weekend - modelling, unwrapping, and texturing.  Though the textures are somewhat of a work in progress.

 I know that I can get the UVs done in less than a day if I put in the work at uni (one week was a cautionary estimate).  

This is an example of the whole flexibility thing.  It’s a lot less stressful.

Right now, the textures I have are a bit of a mix between realistic and stylised.  I’ll be refining the style of them over the next few days so it looks more cohesive.  There are also no lights yet...  Because for some reason, when I put lights in, the render comes out completely unlit.  Logic.  I’ve had this problem in the past, and I hope to actually overcome it this time.

Finally, I promised a video last week.  These are my two animatics for my animations.  I’m putting in the link now but it does say 414min to go...  Which it has said for the past half hour.  Yay internet.

Oh, real time.  I have such a love-hate relationship with you.  One one hand, you are responsible for every game I love.  But on the other...  

You can suck to work with.

The large team based project last trimester was based in a real time platform - Sketchfab.  In addition to this, we also had to provide assets for the games students (and will again).  So, I now have a bit of experience with how my own workflow needs to change in order to work with real time engines. 

First: poly count.  Learnt this one the hard way.  While 3ds Max on a half decent system can handle a model with thousands upon thousands of polygons, most real time engines are not too thrilled to be faced with that.  Last trimester, the model I made apparently crashed their game engine.  gg Unity.  

I’ll likely never make that mistake again.  Which is a good thing, since optimisation can never hurt.

Rigging remains rather the same.  I doubt I’ll ever purposely want to cut corners on a rig.  However, any issues with the rig and skinning can sometimes be hidden in an offline render with clever camera placement.  There’s less of an option for that in a real time environment especially if it is a game and the camera can be moved freely by the player.

That camera freedom brings me to the next point - animation.  Sometimes in what will end up as an offline render, poses or cyclical animation may only need to look good from one angle - as that will be the only angle the audience will see it.  This is not really an option in games, as you are likely able to view an animation from every angle possible.  So in theory, game animation should be as polished as possible.

That being said, it doesn’t always happen...

Real time animation can also get away with errors that would not fly in a rendered work.  One particular example is when a character runs and the solid armour they wear stretches around with the rig.  I know that I can overlook that in games.  Though if an error like that happened in a film, it likely wouldn’t go unnoticed.  (See: that weird ponytail thing from Frozen.)

Anyway, this ended up as a large wall of text.  Oh well.

---

Going in a different direction this week after discovering this video:

It’s amazing to see how much of a TV series literally doesn’t exist.

Also dragons.

After seeing this, I realise how filming is a relatively small part of creating a series like this.  Also, that there are a lot of places for animation in television - even if the whole point of the work in this particular specialisation is to make sure it goes somewhat unnoticed :p

Personally, VFX work does look very interesting.  I do hope to incorporate it into a project at uni at some point.  It really brings the existing work to life.  This also makes me realise that post production can completely change the way a video looks.  

This may be very useful in my 3D project this trimester, as I could potentially use post production techniques to improve on the render I get from 3ds Max.

---

In regards to my project - storyboards! 

While planning out on screen motion is fun, boy do I dislike getting it all down on “paper”.

So far, I’ve only completed my storyboard for the 2D animation.  I’ve kept in mind my own workload when planning it out - eg. Not changing the background too much.  At this stage, I’ve made it work so I should only have to paint out 3 different backgrounds to animate over, since I don’t want something like this to take up a lot of my time.

After completing both sets of storyboards, I think I will use Adobe Animate to work out my animatic.  The last time I made an animatic, it was in Premiere and After Effects.  Given that I will actually be completing the animation for this project, doing this in Animate will be really beneficial as it will provide a good foundation for my timing and keyframes.  I’ll likely work over the top of the animatic in order to get it done.

Lastly, I’ve also made a start on my 3D model.  Modelling has surprisingly become the most calming aspect of the project so far.  Less thinking, more making.

I’ll obviously have to work on edge loops more, but I plan on fixing all that up after I’ve completed the actual shape.

Disclaimer:  The examples I’m going to be using in this post are from Disney.  Disney are heavily criticised on their anatomy and representation of female bodies.  In this blog post, I’ll only be talking about aesthetics.  While the representation of different bodies is important (and more realistic!) that’s not what this post is going to be focusing on.

Following on from last week, I’ll be talking more about character animation.  This time, it’s about visual fundamentals to this specilisation, and how this allows us to make aesthetically pleasing images.

While character animation extends to animals and inanimate objects, as well as clothing and potentially props, I’ll mainly be focusing on two major points - facial structure and anatomy.

When I first started learning animation, my teacher commented on those who draw anime style characters professionally, saying that in order to exaggerate proportions like that, they were likely gods of anatomy to begin with.

I can say that from personal experience, this is totally true.  Like many kids who got into animation and art as a kid, I tried replicating the styles of my favourite shows - and failed miserably.  The eyes and other facial features always looked misshapen, I couldn’t draw hands (still can’t?), and overall, the characters looked stiff and and uninteresting because I wasn’t able to pose them.  This was because I didn’t understand anything about anatomy.

Here’s a fun little example I dug out of my old DeviantArt account.

It probably didn’t help that the first one was likely done in Paint...

13 year old me’s drawing aside, a solid understanding of both facial structure and anatomy is paramount to creating aesthetically appealing characters - even if they are going to have exaggerated features.

A fun example of this kind of thing comes from TheNamelessDoll here on tumblr who has uploaded edits of Disney girls with more realistic facial proportions.

Looking at comments from people on this shows that there’s quite a split on who prefers what.  However, it’s interesting to see how both of these images have a lot of similarities, yet look so different - mainly because of eye scale.

The same goes for the human body.  Here’s a comparison from OceanStarlet on DeviantArt.

While these are both the same character, they look completely different in both a more “realistic” and “Disney” style.  Even though they look different, they would likely move in a very similar manner due to very similar base anatomy.

At the end of the day, both facial and anatomical structure are very important to character animation when it comes to making aesthetically pleasing designs AND believable animation.  Even when a character’s features are exaggerated to the point of looking completely unrealistic, a base understanding of anatomy is important to making them appeal to an audience.

---

As for my personal project, I have finally settled on a character design! (I think)

Here’s a little preview.

Keeping it nice and simple for myself character-wise this trimester.