Mega Man 25th Animation Progress

To be perfectly honest, I haven't touched this project, or 3D stuff in general, since my last post (4 months? Yeesh...), having gotten more interested in digital painting. Since it's been numerous weeks since my tablet broke (protip: don't trust Wacom products with wire connectors, they break easily and then you will cry) and going mad from a lack of being able to do anything about it, I suddenly remembered about poor X here.

...And remembered that part of the reason I'd lost interest was because I couldn't get his eyes to move. But today I finally figured that out! So I made a .gif. A really small and noisy .gif 'cause I'm impatient.

Half the reason I wanted to use MMX's intro stage is because I already had a decent model of X ready. Here's a screencap of what he's looking like.

@ sepalina: I certainly got stuff done I wouldn't have otherwise. :) The intro stage may seem overdone (though I can't think of anything off the top of my head ^-^;) I want to try something a bit different. Unlike, say, Shane Newville's MMX animation or Rockman Xero, which are more about epic fight scenes, what I've got in mind is more acting-heavy. Epic fight scenes are cool and have their place and Mega Man fans should check out the videos I linked to. I'll hopefully get to some scripting and storyboarding on Monday. What I'm going for might be more clear once I do.

Well, I've been thinking about this tumblr lately and, to be honest, I find it a bit of an eyesore. Not because it's a record of my inability to complete its project (which it is) but because it sits here, without anything to update it. I just want to be able to update it. To do something with it. So I'm writing this to propose a new idea/project and to see if anyone would actually care.

The idea is to make an animation, probably around a minute long, based on the intro stage of Mega Man X. Specifically, the intro stage up to the first Bee Blader. Not the whole stage because that would involve Storm Eagle's battleship, Zero, and Vile with his ride armor. I'd never finish that so I'm aiming lower. It's still rather ambitious.

All I can say is that I sketched him out once semi-recently (it wasn't very good...) and I haven't done any 3D work of him.

Well, it's time for me to say what so many overambitious fan creators have said in the past:

I'm done. I had grand plans that outpaced my ability. This whole project has taught me the limits of what I know. It would be a disservice to you and me if I kept working since I'm just not up to the task. So I plan to take some significant time to learn the areas I don't know (which is everything, but some things a lot more than others). Will I ever come back to this project? Maybe, but I really don't know and it wouldn't be within the next year, at least.

All that being said, if anyone has questions, I'll leave the ask box open.

Well, here's the Legends scene, just in time for the big 25!

It's the same frame as before to highlight the changes. Sera is now fully textured... I think. Did you know Sera's wings are pink? I didn't. Her concept art has them green so I'd made them green. I had an interesting reaction when I looked up game footage to check something else and noticed the pink.

I'm alive, I'm home, and I'm fairly miserable at the moment.

I made myself post something this evening because in about 12 hours I'll be in surgery. It's fairly straight-forward oral surgery so I'm not especially worried. But it's still surgery, though, so I'm a bit nervous. I won't be home until Friday so I won't get anything done until then.

There have been no updates because I haven't gotten anything done. One of the reasons for that is that I was stuck on a necessary evil called uv mapping. I loathe it and nothing was unwrapping the way it should have. It shredded what little motivation I had. Today, however, I found the parameter that was fouling me up. So now I just dislike it instead of it actively defying me. Hopefully, I'll get something done this week.

First major animation pass (key poses and timing) of the first scene, the Mega Man Legends scene. There's obviously a ton of polishing for me to do.

Took me long enough to update him but I finally sat down and did so today.