Minor - Artist's Hands Progress

I've started work on the artist's arms and hands. I'm modeling the arms too as I want the hand movements to look more natural, compared to what they might look like if I just modelled the hands and part of the wrists. I didn't draw a side view as I thought I wouldn't need it, but I may draw one soon as I'm struggling a little bit without it.

Artist's Arm Orthograph

I've started to model the hands but I'm already a little stuck. I've been watching the Jet Pack Jones hand tutorials to help me but as my hand designs are a little different to the ones for jpj I'm running into a few issues. I've got a lot of pinching and star-shaped edges (if that makes sense) in my geometry and I'm not sure how to deal with them.

I roughly added the arm to the hand to see what the whole arm would look like, and I'm probably going to redo the arm as it doesn't fit with the hand properly. The vertices don't line up well at all which is causing an unnatural twist in the wrist, making it look weird and lumpy. I'll have to model it again using the right dimensions so I don't have to mess about with adding more edges to the hand geometry to make it fit onto the wrist.

I've got a lot to do in terms of adding more character to the hands and making them look more like my drawings, but I'm not sure what to do right now as I really want to fix all the pinching happening in the geometry before I start adding more detail.

Minor - Artist Hand Designs

In my Premise crit, I was given feedback about the look of the artist's hands. I had used my real hands as a reference, but in doing so, they didn't look very stylized. I was a bit stumped on where to start so I made an influence map of 3D hand designs I liked the look of that looked more stylized rather than realistic.

Hands Influence Map

I sketched out a few designs experimenting with varying degrees of realistic and stylized designs. (I thought that the second design on the top row looked weirdly familiar after drawing it, then I realized that I had somehow managed to draw MooMs hands by memory.)

Stylized Hand Designs

I took some of the designs I liked and colored them in a way similar to how I would want them to look in my animation. I'm not really sure which design to use. Although the middle design is more stylized, I'm not a huge fan of it. I like the rendering on the design on the right, but I like the moles I added to the design on the left. I added these to give the design a more personal touch to make the arms/hands look more like my own.

Further Development on Hand Designs

Minor - Desk Set Up

I've modelled the lamp and the desk and added to stationary models to it to see what the set might look like. I arranged to stationary according to where they were placed in my animatic, however, I'm not sure I like the composition at the moment. The sketchbook needs to be bigger as it is the focal point of the animation. 

Minor - Stationary Modelling

I've modelled the stationery that will be in my animated short. I used the stationery designs as a rough guide for my models as I didn't feel it was necessary to draw orthographs for simple objects. I haven't modeled the paint/ink brush bristles yet as I wanted to experiment possibly with using nHair simulation. I'm not sure how well that would work, it might be easier to figure out some kind of rig for it instead. I need to find out a way for the bristles to be able to move naturally as they will need to be able to move against the paper of the sketchbook e.g when sketch gets squished by the ink brush. I'll see if I can find any tutorials online that might help me with that as I don't want to waste time trying to figure out nHair when there could be a more effective solution.

Minor - Set and Prop Designs

These are some stationery designs based on the stationery in my animatic. I drew a couple variations of certain objects because I was unsure what colours, shapes, and patterns to use for them. I've coloured the designs as I want to start to think about how I want to colour and render my animation. I've used bright colours because I want my animation to have a fun, light atmosphere to it. I didn't feel it was very necessary to draw orthographs for the objects as they'll be quite easy to model, However, I have drawn orthographs for the lamp as it might be a bit trickier to model compared to the rest of the props.

Minor - Sketch Orthographs

The model I made for my premise project was more of a test rather than a final model, so I've drawn orthographs for Sketch for when I remodel them.