Thesis: The Female Model

Thesis: An Overdue Update

Hello readers!
This post is long overdue. When last quarter ended I was completely unable to find the time to blog. After that, the idea of actually blogging became increasingly difficult because of the compounding backlog of things I needed to blog about, but here we go.

The End of Part 1:
Last quarter ended a number of weeks ago, right before Thanksgiving break. I managed to create a render of my character before that point. His pose is only temporary, as well as his rig.

The image come out fairly well, but he definitely still needs work, textures on the shoes, smaller details like buttons, skin texture to add some life to his face, etc. The thesis midway presentation went decently, but I was called out on a lack of direction for the project, which was a valid argument. This project has always been larger than the 20 week class allotted for. The character is only part of a much larger project and because of that I have always been uncertain which direction I would be going in the time allowed;  more rigging, more characters, or more environments for him to populate. I was also attempting to learn and use a number of advanced techniques and was uncertain of how long they would take.

Thesis Part 2:
For all the reasons I previously stated, I have changed up my timeline for the second half of this project. Originally, my plan was to focus on more advanced rigging and some animation for the end of the term. Making some adjustments, cutting back on the idea of a completely polished rig and facial blend shapes, I have taken the first 3 weeks to create a second character, a female character. She was a character slated for after the 10 weeks, but she should fit in more appropriately now. Her presence helps in a number of ways: a second character is a more easily measure deliverable, she compliments the first character as a set, and helps focus on my preferred aspect of 3D - the design and modeling.

The female character is proportionately similar to the male and stylized the same. Her personality can best be described as "spunky" and i hope to capture that. I have reworked the facial topology to work better with the expressions I hope to achieve from these character. Her model is almost finished, and I hope to have a render up by this weekend. If I am unable to get her the quality I am hoping for, she will push into week 4 and I have the Winter break for making up lost time.

Thesis: The Clothing

With the hair a decent place a week ago, this last work week I turned to the clothing of the character. I was having second thoughts about my original designs, but came to like them once again. A change I did end up making was the general size of the clothing. I want them to appear large and baggy on the character. I want him to roll up his sleeve only to have it slip down again over his hands. Where the model currently stands, I need to simply scale up the shirt a little more.

 

Yes, he is missing his shoes. I am slightly stuck on what style of shoes he should be wearing. Sneakers, boat shoes, white, black, brown, I am just uncertain of what will tie into his appearance (most likely just sneakers given his younger age.) As for clothing dynamics I am also at a bit of an uphill battle. I have been searching to no avail for anyone who has any hints for how to properly do clothing deforms on a character without adding hundreds of hours of cloth dynamic cache calculation. I am still looking into it and will get back to you when I get over that hurdle. I will probably be able to figure out the clothing dynamics thanks to the hair dynamics, which are a lot of fun to play with. 

The other task I have decided to tackle this week is Zbrush. With the clothing modeled, I wanted to start sculpting the details in the fabric. I have only used ZBrush once before and that was years ago. Traditionally I use Mudbox for all of my sculpting needs, but the bottom line is that Zbrush simply offers more. It has been a program I have always wanted to get into but never had the drive to devote my time to a completely different interface. First impressions: I hate it. Zbrush's user interface is increadibly illogical from a 3D movement standpoint to a generic program standpoint. Its layout is oddly set up, models are not models but tools, and its difficult to move around an object - a feature that is extremely important to a sculpting program. Second impressions: I really like it a lot. Its interface may still be odd, but with the addition of a plug-in called ZSwitcher my moving troubles have been solved. ZSwitcher is a third party plug-in to Zbrush that instantly changed the movement scheme to that of Maya or Unity, the programs I use the most. It downloads fast and installs incredibly easily. It does cost 30 bucks, but they have a 30 day free trial that I just started. I would highly recommend this route to anyone who uses Maya often and is interested in ZBrush. With that problem solved I could finally start some sculpting, and Zbrush does a phenomenal job at that.

This is just the start point of the shirt sculpting. It still needs a large amount of work, but the speed of that work is increasing rapidly as I learn the tools better. Once the larger wrinkles are in I will be adding stitching and seems. One particular tutorial I was watching showed an easy way to develop your own seamless brushes in Zbrush for designing your own stitch. I should be able to create a few high quality stitch brushes to use on the shirt and pants to give them the look I want.

Thesis: The Progress

It's been a long time, you monster. This post is Long overdue. It is currently the start of week 7, and  my last post was the start was way back at the end of week 4 so I have some updates for you readers. For week five we needed a design document and a presentation. The design doc is primarily a collection of pre-production work, what is our thesis project, what research have we done, what are our inspirations, what our initial designs look like, what our schedule is, and where are we so far. I focused on my research into what makes a good character in an animated short, what gives them appeal, and why we as an audience root for them. My document also went into my plans and my progress showing sketches and blocking models. Hopefully I can add a link to download the doc as a PDF on here, I will update that as soon as I look into how.

Since the middle of week 5 I have been able to get down to the fun parts, actually doing the project. I have been focusing on the head of my model, the shape, the finer details, the general refinement. I was slightly under the weather week 6 and a bit over worked at my job, putting in around 45 hours on top of classes and this project so I did not get in as much work as I would have liked, but I managed to get through the work (sans blogging it would seem). I have been doing a large amount of technical research, reading blogs and watching tutorials, and have been having a lot of fun doing it.

 I have been looking into hair that can be dynamic and attractive. I started with a hood like shape made of lofted surfaces to get the general concept of how I want the hair to sit on the characters head. From there, I drew CV curves onto the surfaces. Those curves were then made into paint effects shapes to increase the number of curves, add thickness, and add some more natural layers of hair. Next, those paint effects were made back into surfaces, and then back to curves once again, giving me a large amount of curves to work with. I created a hair system and applied it to my newly made curves and started to play with the settings of the hair.

The results were not too bad. This is definitely the more realistic style I am leaning towards. I need to introduce some additional messiness to it as it is currently too clean and neat (specifically on the right hand side ) as well as clean up the back some. The color is not bad, but I may need to make it slightly less red. The good part about the Maya hair system is how easily I will be able to make it dynamic, even though calculating those dynamics may take a while. Hopefully along with a HQ character render by the end of this quarter I can also get a short animation of his head moving to show the dynamics.

So along with the modeling (nicely modeled ear for example) and hair, I have been researching into skin rendering. The above image is a solid start for me to work off of. The subsurface scattering is currently a little too heavy as the algorithm scale conversion is at 8, what it should be around 10-12. This essentially means that too much light is shining through the characters body. His ears are too red because the scale is too small and too much light shines through. I foresee a problem with his cartoon style that may require two skin materials with different scale conversions as his hands will only be slightly thicker than his ear.

I got slightly off course with my schedule, working on hair and skin before finishing the cloths of the model. Because I was never completely confident in the clothing design of my character, I haven't been able to commit myself to finishing the clothing models. My quarrels with the design seem to have calmed a bit more so I will likely be moving forward with those this week.

Thesis: The Blocking Model

This week, with many aspects of pre-planing getting to their final stages, I started to work in Maya. What I was creating is known as a blocking model for my character. A blocking model is relatively basic and used to establish the general shapes and sizes of what a modeler is trying to create. This helps us get a feeling for what the final model or scene will look like. I started with very basic shapes to get the size and placement of head, torso, arms, and legs all based off of my original drawings.

Once I had my shapes and placement established, I pulled away at the primitive objects and added in more and more detail. The image above is the more detailed result. This is slightly beyond the blocking stages and into the actual modeling stages: connecting body parts, adding hands, creating a detailed head. Setting up the primitives helped me get the shape of the body to better proportions.

This is far from a final model. The body took between 4-6 hours and represents the boys body under his clothing. Hopefully I can get his clothing to drape around his body well. The face took closer to 9 or 10 hours. Traditionally I model in a realistic style. It is shockingly difficult to create a stylized head that is not "scary beyond all reason." Much of that 10 hours was just slight sculpting back and forth. The slightest changes to the model would make it look far better, or drastically worse; it is not a style I am accustomed to. The head still needs a fair amount of refinement, and the body is still closer to a boxing model.

I was so uncertain of the way my model was turning out that I decided to test if my character had become a hideous monster, an abomination, a crime against humanity. To test his appearance, I took the image of the model into photoshop, used the hair layer from the initial drawing, and added some color to simulate what his skin may eventually look like. The results to this test are shown in the image to the right. It seems there is hope for him yet. This gives me a good idea of what changes need to be made to the model in order to get the look I desire.

Week Breakdown
Body - 5 Hours
Head - 10 hours
Blog  - 2 Hours
Research/Planning/Design Docs - 2 hours

Thesis: The Character

Thesis: Inspiration Images

One of the largest inspiration on the design of my characters come from the most recent animated short from Pixar, "La Luna" (Shown at the top and bottom of the post). In the short, a small boy sets out on a job with his father and grandfather. Through the short, the boy gains confidence and obtains a new level of individuality and personal understanding. The young boys wide set eyes, soft lighting, and variety of facial expression create a cute, relate-able, underdog of character that the audience feels for. This is the overall feeling I hope to create with my own.


Although I intend to use a similarly proportioned character, the "La Luna" characters use modeled hair rather than hair physics. Even though its far more difficult and may take me some time to get right, I plan on creating more realistically rendered hair. The image on the left comes from Deamworks full length feature, "How to Train Your Dragon." The movie was stylized, but had very high quality rendered hair. It also doesn't the main character of move, Hiccup, has a hair style similar to the one I imagine for my protagonist.


The hair style of my character is more important than just the appearance of the character. By having the hair in front of his face, he can hide his gaze from others. This is a tactic used to display the insecurities of a character. It is used to display his low self esteem and self questioning. This is the root of the of the characters inability to be creative. The image on the right is from the video game Final Fantasy XIII and is another example of high quality rendered hair.


In terms of skin, my characters will have softly lit skin using subsurface scattering. This style of skin has been used since the first toy story. It gives a softness to the character and to the animation that I want my film to have. The Disney film Tangled, shown left, also displays the type of softness of hair and skin I hope to obtain. The movie is more stylized to the tone of a traditional hand drawn animation given the company's history. This created a clean, soft, bright tone with expressive characters. Tangled, being a movie entirely centered around a girl with long hair, is another great example of rendered hair.

Thesis: The 20 Week Plan

Most of my posts about my thesis have been about the overarching project as a whole. Here I would like to breakdown my plan for thesis class which consists of 20 weeks. Initially, I had intended to create the storyboard and animatic of the entire project, but I worry these may get in the way of the focus of the in class project, the characters. In the first 10 week section of the thesis, I want to focus primarily on the character that will be the protagonist of the film. My next post will be my inspirations for his design, color pallets, and possibly some of my own sketches. Once his design reaches completion, I will model, texture, and rig this character. I'll be putting a large amount of focus on his skin, hair, clothing, and facial rig.

I want this character to display an extreme amount of production quality, the type of quality shown from the larger production studios. The skin will use sub-surface scattering to help create the softness desired. The hair should look and move in a visually pleasing and realistic manner, even if it is a stylized or exaggerated realism. The clothing should also move fluidly and realistically as it hangs of the characters body. It will have to move with him as he twists and bends in different ways. Finally, the rig. I will be putting a huge amount of effort in developing/finding an effective, easy to use facial rig that lends itself to easily develop many varied expressions. Because so much of the film relies on the main characters expressions, this rig will be vital.

Hopefully I will be able to accomplish most of my goals for the main character in the first 10-14 weeks. If I am able to complete him within the 10 weeks, I can use the remaining time work on the remaining characters. Once I refine the techniques used on the main character, I will be able to implement them more rapidly on the remaining characters.

Thesis: Full Synopsis

This is a full synopsis of my planned animation. I am going to reiterate that this is the planning for a full year project, not only my 20 week thesis. My 20 week thesis will be aspects for this much grander project, characters, skeletons, skin, hair, and possibly some animation. This will be a bit of a lengthy post, and for that I apologize. I am trying to be as thorough as possible so that I can organize shots and assets, and so you as the reader can envision yourself the completed animation that I have in my head. Thanks for reading.

Full Synopsis: The animation follows a young boy who struggles to be creative that is tasked with the assignment of doing so. The short opens in a classroom, early in the day, with the camera nearly parallel to the wall with the entrance. Two young girls enter the room, chatting to each other and with a bounce in their step. Shortly after, a young boy enters the room, he is small, head down, and has a large backpack encumbering him. The camera follows him as he enters. He stops, looks up for his seat, and proceeds toward his desk moving toward the camera and falling out of focus. The camera continues to pan and the same speed as when it started across the front wall of the classroom. It moves up and zooms in on the chalkboard with the message and title of the short, “Today’s Lesson: Be Creative.”

Jump cut to a shot of a blank desk which then has a paper slapped down onto it. The camera rotates up to show the young boys face. He looks up from the sheet, opens his mouth and raises his hand as if he is about to ask a question, but holds back. His eyes fall back to the blank sheet of paper and his left hand strums its fingers across the desk. The camera jumps to the paper again, now from the boys perspective. His hands begin to show nervousness, tapping his pencil against the page and fidgeting. The camera then jumps to the image of a ticking clock, using the classic clock fade to show the passage of time (5 minutes). The camera returns to the protagonist’s perspective. The page is still blank, and the pencil is now dull because he has been tapping it for so long.  The face of the character is then shown again. He sighs, slumps back in his chair, and closes his eyes, head tilted down. As he opens his eyes again, the characters eyes are glancing back and forth.

The character catches his eye on the boy sitting to his right. His face lightens and peaks with curiosity. He pushes himself up in his seat slightly with both hands to get a better view. The camera shows the boy to the right of the main character, from the protagonist’s perspective, drawing frantically. Much of the second boy’s paper is covered by his arm, but the left corner shows spiraling scribbles that tilt toward the center of the page. The camera zooms in on this corner as 2D become 3D (kingdom hearts 2 intro). These squiggles transform into a massive slide 3D slide that the 2nd boy begins sliding down. As he spirals around the camera at least one time, the white page changes to a light blue sky, filling in like a watercolor painting. (find an example.) The second boy launches off the end of the slide into the air and lands into a cartoon plane with a similar style Snoopy’s.  The plane swoops off as the camera attempts to follow. It does this for a second before reappearing smaller, flying horizontally from the left side of the screen traveling to the right side of the screen. ⅓ of the way across the screen, the sky fades out revealing the classroom as the small plane flies directly in front the main characters face. The main boy watches the little plane with awe as it putters before him, and poofs into a puff of smoke. The boy continues to stare for a moment as his face shows the excitement of an idea popping in his head. His head quickly drops to draw intensely and the camera follows to show the top of his head and his pencil moving.

The camera once again shows the clock. More time passes as it cross fades between two times. The camera returns to the drawing boy. He raises his head, looking pleased with himself, and exhaling as if tackling a great challenge. He lifts the paper to view the fruits of his labor only to find a well diagrammed mathematical graph (something along the lines of a sine wave or more complex image that would not be considered creative.) As the camera cuts to his face, his expression drops to an expression that says “well crap” (hard to describe, easy to picture). The paper is set down and the character erases vigorously, blowing away any leftover eraser shreds. He places his cheek in his left hand, his fingers covering his eye, shaking his head, eyes down. As he opens his eyes and parts his fingers to see through, he looks to the girl drawing next to him. The camera focuses on her as it did the second boy. On her paper is a bright pink sky with flowers on the ground. As the camera zooms in, the drawing flows into a complete scene, and from under her arm resting on the page gallops a muscular unicorn, with an eye patch. The tone of the scene changes to a more intense war-like feel as the girl, mounted on the stylized beast whirls her sword cackling in the style of Invader Zim. As the laughter grows, a loud “thud” sounds, and the camera focuses on the main characters face again, eyes wide with terror.

Once again defeated, the boy looks down at his page. His expression matches his sadness, and he begins to very slowly doodle. The camera moves to his point of view to show his drawing as he finishes it, it is a sad stick figure sitting on the ground on a blank page. The camera very slowly zooms into the drawing as it morphs from the stick figure into the protagonist sitting alone on a blank page. As the camera continues to move in on the sad figure, there is a thud on the desk. The camera zooms out to the characters point of view and the stick figure returns to its original form on the page. There is now another arm on his desk. The camera follows the arm up to show a young girl leaning over his desk. His face is one of surprise as he watches the girl, who remains out of focus on the right side of the screen. As she finishes what she is doing on his desk, she leaves to the front of the room to turn in her own paper. The boy looks down slowly at his own page. The camera shows his page again, now with a girl stick figure holding her hand out to the sad stick figure. As the camera zooms in, they change into the actual girl and boy. She helps him up, with him not breaking gaze with her, and they begin to walk. As they do, the world begins to populate with trees, flowers, and a sunset colored sky in a painterly fashion. In the background of this scene is the second boy’s plane in the distance, and the first girl riding her mount off into the sunset. The scene fades to black, credits begin to roll. As they do, the classroom wall comes into view, slightly darker as if behind a black screen. On the wall is a bunch of drawings hung, the pink unicorn, the airplane, and the two of them together along with all other drawings done that day. Just before the animation finally fades one last time, the boy and girl can be seen just as they exit the room. 

Thesis: The Project

For a number on months now I have been planing my thesis project, most of it in my head and some in documents scattered around my laptop. Against my own advice, I have decided to do a short animation. One of the most common problems that plagues college students working on projects is ambition beyond obtainment. We get in our heads a great idea and we refuse to modify it regardless of anyone's opinions. I have done my best throughout the years to keep my projects goals obtainable but polished. In short, if someone tells me they are going to attempt a few minutes of animation for their 20 week project, I will advise against it, but have chosen to do one for my own.

I plan to create an animated short that would be most closely related to the animated shorts created by Pixar. The title of the animation is "Today's Lesson: Be Creative." The short story depicts a young boy in a classroom who is faced with the open ended task of being creative but struggles as those around him make quick work of the assignment. Yes, the story is derived from personal experience.

One of the most important features of the animation are the young protagonists expressions, as it is a film without voice. I want the viewers to experience some form of emotion while they watch it. I want them to worry about the outcome, truly feel for the character, and feel relief if he succeeds. Emotion and storytelling is the primary driving forces of the Pixar animations. It is what makes them successful and is what makes them great. It is also not an easy task to accomplish in only a few minutes.

A full rundown of the story, followed by the shot list and storyboard will be in the next couple of blog posts.

I am going to forward about my ambitions for this 20 week project: I know with a high level of certainty that I wont have a completed animation by the end of the course. Although I will be creating the layout, storyboard, anamatic, and plan of the entire animation, I will be focusing on the main character, his rigging, animation, lighting, skin, hair, clothing, and blend shapes. With this, I will have an important foundation that I will build my animated short around over the next year.

Hopefully I can pull it off.

And we're back.

After a year and a half without any updates, I am finally back to share what I have been up to and my upcoming projects. Since last we spoke, Kona's Crate was released on IOs and Android devices, I have continued to work with Darkwind Media with some new stuff soon to be released, and I have completed yet another year of schooling. I am now back at RIT for one last year before graduating and working on my "thesis project." For us, the thesis is not a long winded document requiring a defense, but a 20 week long project to demonstrate the skills we have acquired while studying here. This will be the focus of my blog for now, to document my progression, voice my opinions on it, and maybe even get some feedback from all you readers out there on the interwebs, (by "all you readers" I naturally mean my only fan, my mom. Hi mom!)