Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Thesis Update

Well, this week I am finishing up my animatic and building the last 2 armatures I'll need. I've also got the basic set materials and I'm beginning to cut them according to the scale blueprints I've drawn.
The most fun thing this week was doing composition/film studies in preparation for my layout/color keys. Once these are done I'll head to the Fabric District to buy yards of fabric in the colors dictated by my color keys, and begin the costuming process.
The most difficult thing was staying up really late every night to try to finish this animatic. It's been taking the majority of my time and I'll be more than happy to get it over with and move on to more fun parts of the process.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Weekly update

   This week I've been focusing on character facial expressions, specifically for my main character. So far I've drawn: Blank, Concentrating, Annoyed, Annoyed and Disgusted, surprised, nonplussed, confused, unsure, discovering a pastry, ambiguously skeptical, rolling eyes, embarrassed, mouth full, eating, scared and disgusted, scared, more scared, grossed out, confused, sticking tongue out, ghostly, screaming, etc.
I drew them all on paper from the front view, some also from the side, and a lot I drew in 3/4 view in the actual animatic.

I've also been working a lot more on my 3D model of the boy's head. It's been fun trying to figure out the logistics of translating 2D expressions into 3D models, but it will also be a huge challenge. We'll see how it goes.....................

Monday, September 6, 2010

Week 2 Fall '10 thesis blog

This week I've been working mainly on storyboarding for my animatic, and modeling the boy's head in Maya so it can be printed on the 3D printer.
One thing that was difficult was trying to draw my storyboards in Photoshop without a Wacom driver for the computer. Being in the new animation building is great but it has its drawbacks, as the new computers still need some tweaks and programs to be fully functional. Without the Wacom driver installed, the tablet has no pen pressure setting, which has been hard to work around.
I've tried making some hands out of wire and liquid latex, which has been a lot of fun to experiment with. Some turned out okay and others look like a drippy mess, so more work is needed as I expect to need approximately 3 pairs of hands for each character, and far more for the main character.

As soon as I finish my animatic, I can move on to color keys, which are essential so I can lock in the color palette and buy fabrics to begin costuming the puppets. The head modeling is coming along on schedule.