Advanced Chracter Animation

Link to my final animation video: here The final animation product turned out pretty well in the end, with both characters being created to look how I designed them in the early stages of the project and also with me being behind on the production of the animation as it came closer to the deadline. I was able to convert the scene I had drawn in the storyboard into a 3-Dimensional scene and with this, I was able to animate all of the necessary stages of the story from the storyboard I had. This shows that my plan worked out in the end, where I was able to stick to the plan that I designed in the beginning and to find a way to stay on schedule when I had complications or fall backs during the plan. What I would change about the animation are the walk cycles I had for both characters in the two different scenes, which seemed a bit off when watching it back. I would accomplish this by spending more time to get the timing right for the poses and then to alter the tangents in the graph edi...

This is how the final full body rig looks like for the main character, including the different elements that I will need to animate during the next stage and with everything named accordingly. This self-made rig took some time to complete, but I ended up with all the tools I needed to then animate the character and to rig him up to move how I wanted him to move. I added some rigging curves that I might not have needed for the animation of the character, but with these additional movements, I can alter some of the positions that the character will be in. I did the face rig after the main body was functioning correctly and I started with the eyes first. This included the control for where the eyes where going to be looking and then the controls for the left/ right eye lids. I then did the eyebrows, which had 3 main controls for each brow. This worked out pretty well for a simple rig for the character's eyes and eyebrows, which do exactly what I needed them to do for the animati...

The Head texturing came out pretty well, with the main textures fitting well on the different parts of the face. I used a 'blinn' material for the eyes so tat it can have a slight shine on the material, which makes it looks more realistic. The teeth have a 'phong' material on them, so that they can have that shiny look as well like actual teeth do and even though they're simple, they work well with the character. The only part I would work on again is the part where the hair meets the skin, where it looks slightly raised when you look close up. Also, there was a part of the nose where it goes inward in the middle and so I would try and fix that up more to appear rounded. The hand looks really good with the texture on it and that works well with the rest of the body where I show the skin. Although, the thumb looks slightly off and to fix this I should have rotated it towards the top. This would have made it looks more natural for a thumb and to just improv...

 This is my main character, who will be the one hiding, and I used the same method of modelling the body as I had done in my previous work in a different module. This time I decided to have the edge loops on the forearm to be twisted so that I could make things easier for the animation stage and so that the model looks realistic. The edge loops around the arm line up well around the arm and I modified the shape of the arm to have a more realistic form of a human arm, from the shoulders to the hand. This the side view of the bottom half of the character and I decided to have his trousers slightly fitted, but to then flare out the bottom of the trousers to cover the shoes a little. I did this to help with the appeal of the character and also to make things easier for myself to not need socks on my character. I believe that with this character I will be able to have some accurate movements with the ankle, knees and hips which will help me to do the poses I need to for my story...