A Dirty Job

Here's a new test I've been working on:  

The trash that spills out of the bag just ended up being sort of like mud or compost simply because I didn't want to model and animate a bunch of small objects, so sue me!  Just rigging the bag was a trick in itself.  This situation itself is actually very familiar to me from my two years experience as a barback in a New York City restaurant.  I'm just glad to be making new CG stuff for my reel again!

(P.S. The character rig I used is called the 'Malcom Rig' and I got it courtesy of AnimSchool.com)

I Mean Business

Here's a new animation test, finally. I modeled and rigged* this character as well, and he will probably be appearing in my film next year, with some changes (a different costume, and without that hair).

I have also completely modeled and rigged* another character besides this one, so look forward to an animation test with her soon!

*using the Advanced Skeleton Auto-Rigger for much of it

Moving in a New Direction

Here is some stuff showing off some of the flexibility of the practice character I have been working on this year. I plan on doing a fully CG film next year, but I won't be using this character, I just used him to learn modelling and rigging and work out all the problems I think I'll run into, and I've definitely found things that I like and things that I will do differently for my film characters.  I had the great fortune to be taught by some really smart people this year: Dan Platt for modelling, John Yoon for rigging, and Scott Peters for shading. 

Without giving too much away, there are some more advanced techniques that I did not use on this character that I have been testing and plan on implementing in my next characters. 

Shape-Shifter

So first semester is now over and it is time for the much needed winter break. Here is the current progress on my model, next semester we go into rigging. For our final exam we had to do three blend shapes with our models: a blink, a mouth open, and one of our choice (mine is a brow up, and I got to learn how to do a wrap to get the eyebrow geometry to follow the facial geometry). Before the next semester begins I have to straighten the character's legs out because that makes it easier to rig.

UPDATE 03/21/11 - I straightened out the character's legs.

I am going to miss this class, Dan Platt was a really awesome teacher and I definitely learned a lot.

HOVER OVER THE IMAGE TO ROTATE THE MODEL

A Model Citizen

Here's a quick update of the progress on my model for my character construction class.  I added nostrils, ears, eyebrows, teeth and gums, a tongue, mouthbag and eye sockets, hands, more eye detail, and new boots.  Now the model is completely water tight, and still 100% quads. Next I have to add the clothes, and begin to finesse the details with finer sculpting. Also the materials I put on are only temporary to give an idea of the color until we unwrap the UV's in a later class.

Supermodel

This is the character I am building for now in my Advanced CG Character Construction class. I just finished laying down the basic structure for the head, mouth and eyes. In later classes we will be adding the ears, hands, and clothes, and also sculpt the whole thing a lot more, but for now I think he is starting to look pretty good. The edge loops are in all the right places on his face, and he is 100% quads (no triangles, no polygons with 5 or more sides, it's good for deforming textures for animation).  I still can't believe I'm doing this mostly on my own. The teacher for this class is really amazing. This is one of my favorite classes!

HEY BABY, YOU LIKE MY TOPOLOGY?

(okay not the greatest character design, but it's something for now.)