Character Design - Expressions

 In this character design class, we looked at expressing emotion/ facial expression. We were first given the task to take two emotions and draw someone/something expressing that emotion. I was given 'Surprised' and 'Anxious'. These emotions are rather similar, so it was difficult for me to make it obvious that this character was feeling both of those emotions. I drew his eyebrows raised but also slightly turned up, to try and indicate that he was surprised, but also nervous/anxious. I also made sure his mouth was open but was downturned, and that his eyes were wide but slightly manic as if he has been surprised by something rather unpleasant.

 We were then asked to try and bring a still object to life using expressions and emotions. I was given a chair. At first, I drew a posh, fierce looking chair, a grumpy sofa chair, and a rather chipper armchair. I decided out of all of these, I preferred the posh chair, as I liked how I could work the facial features into the structure, rather than just draw eyes and a mouth straight onto the chair like I did with the sofa chair. 

I developed the snooty chair a little further by drawing some more emotions like surprised/shocked, disgusted, angry and judgemental. I imagine that she is a rather feisty chair that doesn't let just anyone sit on her, and is probably from a very fancy home.

Character Design - Body Language

These are some studies I drew of my classmates acting out various poses that showcased different kinds of body language. We acted out roles that portrayed different levels of status, such as a Boss firing their employee.

Character Design Concepts

I've cleaned up some of my earlier Ghost designs for when I put them into my production bible. These are developmental sketches of my Ghost character and her love interest. 

First Concept Drawings

Rough Early Concepts

Storyboard Thumbnail Sketches

Developing the early designs

Cleaned up Developed Designs

Life Drawing - Drawing Dan

 In this life drawing session the model was absent, so we got to draw out acting tutor Dan. I used coloured pencil for all of these drawings.

5-minute poses and studies

10-minute poses

10-15 minutes poses

20-minute pose

20-minute pose

Working From Realistic Reference - Tweaked Animation

Today I carried on tweaking my Charlie Chaplin animation. I had to look at the graph editor to clean up some of the jittery/ quick movements in the previous playblast I uploaded. I'm a little happier with how the animation is coming along, but I still need to wrap my head around the wrist movements in the reference video and the slightly awkward movements in my animation when the character is sliding down the pole.

Chaplin Tweaked Playblast from noah greenhalgh on Vimeo.

Working From Realistic Reference

We've moved on from weightlifting to Charlie Chaplin, and working from a realistic reference. Below is a playblast of some rough animation I did using MooM. I used a clip of Charlie Chaplin as reference. It needs a lot of tweaking and a few more in-between poses to sort out the jittery hands/wrists and the body movements when the character is sliding down the pole.

Charlie Chaplin Rough Animation Playblast from noah greenhalgh on Vimeo.

Cleaned Up Weightlifting Animation

This week I cleaned up my weightlifting animation. I had an issue with the hands last week, they looked very jittery due to adding too many key frames to try and fix the barbell moving in weird directions in MooM's Hand. I discovered that adding more and more key frames is not they way to go.... it actually just made things much worse. So, instead I deleted unnecessary key frames and then cleaned up the animation in the Graph Editor and parented the barbell to the right hand control. After cleaning up and tweaking the poses a little, I'm a lot happier with how the animation looks. Cleaned Up Weightlifting Animation from noah greenhalgh on Vimeo.

Maya Weightlifting - Added Barbell

In today's class we looked at staggering key frames and also adding a weight to the animation. I tweaked my animation a little by moving the pelvis forward and the hands a little closer to the body. However, when I added the barbell to the scene, I realized how wrong the positioning of the hands were. I tried my best to fix this but this made my timeline a little chaotic and the hands are now very shaky, so I may just remove the animation I have done for the hands and start again, unless there is a less time consuming way to do this? I'm not happy with how rough the animation looks right now.
Weightlifting Added Barbell from noah greenhalgh on Vimeo.

Maya Weightlifting - Restart

In today's Maya class I worked on fixing my weightlifting animation. I think the reason why I was so unhappy with my previous attempt (posted yesterday) was because I was using forward kinomatics on the MooM model's feet instead of inverse kinomatics, which meant that the feet were sliding around awkwardly and it was difficult to fix this without being very meticulous and time consuming. I also didn't like how I had positioned the spine. I figured that it would be less time consuming to just start again instead of messing up my timeline further. I was much happier with my second attempt so I cleaned up the animation in the graph editor, ready for next week when we work on loosening up the animation.

Second Version of Weightlifting Stepped Tangent from noah greenhalgh on Vimeo. Second Version Weightlifting Animation from noah greenhalgh on Vimeo.

Maya Weightlifting - Added Poses

Weightlifting Added Poses from noah greenhalgh on Vimeo.

Updated Moom weightlifting animation, pretty similar to the last video I uploaded, but with more in between poses. I'm really not happy with how this is looking though. I'll be tweaking the poses a lot as I feel like I've positioned the spine wrong and the whole thing looks very stiff.

Character Design Week 3 - Rough Project Concepts

In today's class, we also had some time to work on our own projects, so I started drawing some rough thumbnails of my Aristocrat Ghost from 1920s Paris. These concepts were loosely based on my research on both 1920s Paris and Art Nouveau.

Character Design Week 3 - World Building and Rough Sketches

I've been trying my best to catch up on my character design class this week. Today we looked at how important world building can be when it comes to telling a story. I was given a couple of simple tasks during the lecture presentation; Draw Big Ben in an exaggerated way, and draw an environment for an Egyptian Pharoh. 

Big Ben Thumbnail Sketches

Justin liked the smaller sketches of the tower as he said that putting perspective into account wasn't massively important when thinking of the overall design of the building, and to focus exaggerating the building in a way that gave it more character. He also advised that I look at the building in more detail, as there may be some cool things about the building that I wouldn't notice from a distance, so I started drawing a detailed zoom in of the clock face of the tower.

Pharoh's Tomb Rough Concept

This is a rough concept of a throne room for a powerful Egyptian Pharoh. Justin liked the idea, but he said there isn't enough personality in the drawing. He could figure out that the Pharoh that owned this room was powerful, but not much else. For example, it doesn't show if the Pharoh is scary, or serene, there's not a lot of character to it.

Poses and Arcs in Motion - Weightlifting Key Frames

In Today's class, we were asked to apply the skills we learned posing the MooM model to animation. This is a very basic animation using a stepped tangent to simulate 2D animation, I'll only be using a stepped tangent while creating the extreme poses of the weightlifting animation, the animation will look more fluid once I start adding more in-between frames.

Weightlifting Stepped Tangent Animation from noah greenhalgh on Vimeo.

Dramatic Arcs - Five MooM Acting Poses

In last Thursday's class, we were asked to create five more MooM poses, but this time we had to choose 'Action Poses'. I actually found this rather difficult, but I think this was because I was looking for full body acting poses, and surprisingly a lot of shows/ films will not show the actor's full body in a shot unless it is a heavy action scene (Or at least that was the issue I had), These are the poses I chose to do, but I may re-do a couple as the poses didn't really translate very well through the MooM model due to his rather odd proportions and I feel like these poses aren't dramatic enough.

Confident, Sensual Pose

Confident, Tough Pose

Happy, Friendly Pose

Frightened Pose

Happy, Laughing Pose

Character Design - Week 1 - Research

For week 1 of our character design class, we were given a random number that came with a few prompts for a character design. These are the prompts I received:

- Person/Animal: An Aristocrat

-Conceit/Trait: Art Noveau/Romantic, Dead (A ghost)

-World/Time: 1920s Paris

-Filmic Scene: "We will always have the Eiffel Tower."

-Animation Action: Longing looks.

We were asked to research our given prompts, so, for now, I have been researching 1920s Paris, and the Art Noveau Style.

"Art Nouveau, ornamental style of art that flourished between about 1890 and 1910 throughout Europe and the United States. Art Nouveau is characterized by its use of a long, sinuous, organic line and was employed most often in architecture, interior design, jewelry and glass design, posters, and illustration. It was a deliberate attempt to create a new style, free of the imitative historicism that dominated much of the 19th-century art and design. The term Art Nouveau was coined by a gallery in Paris that exhibited much of this work." - Encyclopedia Britannica

1920s Paris Influence Map:

Art Nouveau Influence Map:

Action Arcs - Five Moom Action Poses

In Today's class we learned all about Animation Posing, and how important the 'Line of Action' can be when posing a 3D Model. We were asked to find 5 action poses to re-create using the MooM model. These are the 5 poses that I chose to do:

The Sprinter

The Basket Ball Player

The Pole Vaulter

The Ice Skater

The Singer 

Premise - Character Concepts

Sculpting Process

Week One - Creating the Base

Week Two - Blocking Out the Face

Week Three - Constructing the Face

Week Three - Adding the Eyes

Week Four - Adding Details

Week Five - Smoothing the Model

Week Six - Finishing Touches

Final Sculpt

Life Drawing Master Post

Life Drawing Year Two by Noah Greenhalgh on Scribd

I'm aware that anything I submit after the toolkit 2 deadline will not be counted towards my grade, however, I wanted to upload this instead of keeping it hidden forever. This year has been pretty awful but I'm trying to get on top of things slowly but surely.

Light Filters

These are my experiments in using light filters, I used the Gobo, Barn door and Light Decay filters to create a blind like pattern across a Maya spotlight. This is a great way to cast shadows without having to model components that you don't necessarily need. I tried using the light blocker but it wasn't making a difference when I rendered the image and I 'm not sure where I went wrong, however, I had no trouble using the other filters other than trying to put the spotlight in the right place.