Module2- Character Preformance and Believibility- 6 Week Group project (Part 1 of 3)

My Role: Create and animate armature, story board, anamatic.
Extended contributions: Editing, floor plan, character moodboard, labratory moodboard, Props- (table, goggles, welding gun, electric glass cylinders, walls, big power machine, lever, TV)


Character sketches and designs

Above im just drawing different shapes of heads and bodies to determine the style of the character. Squares are typicaly boring and triangles are evil. Boring works because it fits the character in the script.

Straight away my character reminds me ff the old guy in Dreamworks's UP and then i also looked at Leonardo Davincis drawings to get a feel of wrinkles in old peoples faces and the gorilla refference is the closest thing to the body shape of my character, im thinking huge arms and short stubby legs, hunch back and very bulky.

Roughly how I expect the character to look, maby older.

Armature Design

So the origional idea was to havetwo thick wires that run through the body, being the arms and the legs, as shown in pink. Also theres a wire for the neck which moves it up and down so the characrer can peek above the TV in the animation. the bulk body and tha shoes are made from layers of wood blocked together, this makes it easy to get back into the armature and fix anything.


Creating the Armature

The plan for the arms did not work as the hands were too flimsy and the arms were too strong so i cut the arms off and left the feet in, so the character had a strong base. i knew the character would be doing the majority of movment with his arms and hands so they had to have backup wires, this is how i redesigned the hands and arms.

By using three wires instead of one thick one i allowed easy animation and if one wire broke in the morning of an animating day, we would still be able to animate without having to go fix the armature.

Walk Cycle

This walk cycle was a practice to see how easy the character was to animate. i love the head bobbibg but feel that when he walks his clumpy feet make him rock from side to side too much. im going to try not to show his feet too much in the animation.i slowed down this walk  so i can use it as refference later while animating.

Clothing
Clothing for a scientist is quiet dull and simple but because hes a boring square he dosent need to stand out.  karki green top wiht slightly lighter trousers, big white scientist jacket with big black gloves and brown shoes.

Facial Features
I looked at Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings of real people to understand the wrinkles on an old persons face.

Fixing a Broken Armature
As i thought the arms broke during the animation so i had to open up the armature dig out the broken wires and attach new ones. all of this was pre planned so it wasnt a problem.

Giving him spare arms was a good way to animate scenes where his hands are infront of his face and also we used them when on the last day of filming one of my characters gloves had gone missing.

We are filming the last scene here and you dont see the character from this side so in stead of fixing the broken arm which wont rise up we simply attach a spare by the use of magic selotape : D