Turnaround for Hand in!

Here's the model i made ages ago for 3D Dancing Nina that never got made, but i will be handing in this beauty as part of my finishing competence:

Scene_01 Shenanigans!

Part of the reason i haven't posted in a long while with hard proof of animation progress is the fact that i had to spend a long time fixing my own mistakes with timing and drawing in my very first scene. 

I'm going to try and explain my process in this obscenely long post: 

1. This was the original keys for scene 1 inbetweened by Freya, I was disappointed with the result, i thought it was too slow and the face and head in general seemed to morph shape far too noticeably for the slow start of my film. The way i'd drawn her face dipped forward at the opening was also inaccurate of the actual length of her face portrayed in my character sheets.

I fixed it by drawing new keys (they are currently being inbetweened by Louise Cadger) after doing some in depth research on skull and facial muscle construction and facial angles from a hand made maquette of my character's head. 

2. The second part of the first scene with original keys by me and inbetweening by Freya. I thought again that my timing was mis-judged  and the face was once again off model.... 

However to spare myself the task of redrawing all of the keys i only re-drew and re-inbetweened the frames at the beginning and end of this part that i felt left the face too noticeable when un-obscured by the character's hands. I also took out a lot of inbetweens to speed up the movement. Nuria's my go-to-woman for timing help :)

3. Part 3 of scene 1 had some drawing issues like the other parts of this scene: the shoulders move at different times and the head is not on model when in it's extreme positions.

I fixed the scene by re drawing the keys  and personally inbetweening to guarantee the fast flip forward of the head was executed on model.

All the head research i conducted in my sketchbook to help me achieve animated results i could live with:

1. observing and drawing my hand made plasticine maquette of Nina's head

2. studying the construction of the human skull from John Raynes "Human Anatomy for Artists" and adapting it to suite Nina's unique character design.

3. Side studies of skull and muscle structure on an adapted human face

4. Photographs of the maquette in lots of different positions and angles, time was spent drawing over the photographs with a hard clean line to demonstrate the flat shape that would be visible of any particular angle on a frame of animation.

5. Making of the maquette: observational studies of an anatomical skeleton and reference from my own 3D Maya model of Nina, made months ago in the early stages of the film's pre-production. When moulding Nina's face i paid attention to the underlying (hypothetical) boney structure of the skull i had imagined and the main muscles responsible for shaping the face i had read about in John Raynes "Anatomy for Artists".

6. I noted a section of "Human Anatomy for Artists" about the tendons connecting the skull to the main torso as these would be in action heavily in the opening scene of Dancing Nina.

 I would like to note that i make these studies in the hope of making my character's structure and movement convincing but i know that due to the unique design of Nina, especially, this won't be entirely possible and i will have to allow for in-human exaggeration in areas such as the neck, arms, lower spine, legs and feet. A lot of the normal human bone and muscle structure has been warped to achieve Nina's design and i intend to make hypothetical studies of more of her body in regards to it's similarities and differences from a normal body.

Semester 1 Summary: Modelling Nina

It's Chriiiistmas! And I'm just sticking up a round up of everything i've accomplished this Semester. This model happened way back in Summer, and as you all know is no longer being used for anything so she remains naked and at a fairly rough stage (ears and hair are undefined and inner mouth is missing) but still I'd like to show her off because she's been a big influence on my current 2D Nina, and i refer back to her constantly when i'm animating.

These were her original reference images

 While modelling her i referred back to Giacometti's sculptures. His work was a major influence at our design stage as well. If i were to try out sculpting this model in Zbrush in the future I'd be going for this hand made, rough, clay-like texture.

  I made my own plasticine models inspired by these sculptures http://dancingnina.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/some-reference-models-i-made.html and uploaded a texture library last semester, http://dancingnina.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/texture-library.html which was a hint to the way Nina's dress would have moved had we ever made the film in 3D. The fact that Nina's legs will now be connected by a maxi-length dress in my animation is down to Giacometti's influence as well:

I also used and continue to use knowledge gained from lifedrawing and and observational drawing when modelling.

 A full view of very tall Nina, with a clean Outliner.

Rough Nina Model: Complete

Gurl, look at that body.

 (smoothed)

 (un-smoothed)

(smoothed)

Nina Rough model: Nearly Done

 -Shaping the pelvis

 -Making the leg from a cylinder

 - Shaping the butt

 - Making the foot from a cube

 -Adding topology on the foot (our design doesn't have toes)

 -Extruding the shoulder from the torso

 -Shaping the arm from a cylinder

 -Making the base for the hand from a cube

 -Creating a finger separately from a cylinder, duplicating and attaching

 - Shaping the thumb from half of another duplicated finger, I extruded out from the hand to make the thumb knuckle first

 -Positioning the arm for rigging with hand attached and snapping to the shoulder

 - Extruding the boob

- Boob

Rough Nina model update

I've been working on a rough model of Nina so that Jo can begin experimenting with rigs, I'm afraid i may have gotten slightly carried away with the detail to the head but in my mind it made sense to make the topology sound so that the same (but higher res.) model could potentially be used as our final.

-I started with a rectangular prism and shaped it from the side as closely as possible to the reference.

 -shaping from the front

 -blocking in the torso using a cylinder, suggesting rib cage

 -The eye seemed like too much detail at this stage but i figured Jo might like to try rigging the eyes. I built it using the space left from building the eye socket so that the shape already fit the curve of her head.

 - adding edge loops

 - extruding some hair detail and nose

-completing the low poly mouth