My Main Characters and Storyline

After looking at many different animals I could potentially use as a character, I wondered if it would help more if I thought about the storyline more. I looked into different ways children's story's can be told and portrayed. I watched many different children's cartoons to get an idea of the types of story lines and think of an idea for one myself. After watching many episode's of Pocoyo and 64 Zoo Lane, I came across the video shown below.



This gave me a very good idea for a storyline which involves something in a tree which cannot be reached. This would be great for involving the giraffe character I drew as one of my ideas. In order to make this storyline reasonable I would need a character which can't reach high places and would need the help of a giraffe. I looked into a few more Zoo animals as I had already chosen one zoo animal and needed another as the main character.

I also thought about what item could be in the tree which would be needed so badly by the main character. Some good ideas I thought about are:

• A ball
• A butterfly
• An apple
• A pretty flower
• A leaf
• A shoe
• A squirrel
• A cat
• A teddy.

Considering this is a children's story I thought the best idea to go with would be something simple. So I decided to have an apple hanging from a tree, which would be pulled down by the giraffe. After I had decided on the item in the tree, the character was easy to decide because I thought about the kind of animals which like apples. Straight away an elephant came to mind and I thought it was a great idea. As I had created an elephant before on a past animation, I thought that it was best that I make the main character a baby. This way it would be harder for him to reach the apple as well. Baby elephants can also be made to look very cute, cuddly and lovable.

I decided to draw the elephant I had to mind to get an idea of what it would look like. The picture of this is shown below. I really like the elephant because its large nose makes it look adorable and baby-like. I wanted it to have very stumpy hands and feet to make people empathise with the character on not being able to reach the apple. I will add something small to this character to give it a small human characteristic, maybe a comfort blanket or a scarf around its next. Maybe even a small tutu around its waist to show its a child, which many children will be able to relate to.

Initial Drawings - More Ideas

After the first set of drawings, I was very disappointed with the ideas that I had come up with. I wanted to make sure I had a solid idea before I started creating a storyboard because I wanted to feel confident about the character I was creating and the personality I wanted to portray. I was also not very happy with the quality of the drawings because they seemed to make the character look less appealing as children's characters.

This character started as a gecko and turned into a frog as I drew it. I would much prefer it being a gecko as it is more of an original idea. I like that his hands and feet look awkward against the rest of his body as if they would stick like suckers to everything. Sticky hands might be a good idea for a funny animation.





















The character below is a lovable panda I thought of bringing to life. As a child myself, I had a giant panda teddy that used to sit in the corner of my room. It looks as though it has to characteristics of a mother as it looks cuddly and warm.





















After running out of ideas for types of animals, I thought back at the design of the giraffe I made and wondered if there was any way I would be able to improve on that character to make it spark an idea in my head of a good animation I could create. After drawing the giraffe, I fell in love with it myself! I thought about how to character could be portrayed by looking at cartoons such as Winnie the Pooh. As the giraffe gives off a slightly tired and ditsy look, I thought about how similar it is to Eeyore, as he is a very much loved character, not just by children. I think this giraffe would make a very good character in the animation as "the best friend".





















The character below was drawn very late at night originally as just a slug. The more characters I drew the more I doodled all over the paper and gave the slug a monocle lens which suddenly gave it so much character. It looked like a professor or a wise old man. Maybe the narrator of the story?

Link Constraint Tutorial

After the link constraint tutorial I wanted to put my skills into action straight away. In the past I have used many other features and ways of linking objects using the attach tool. When the objects needed to be unattached I had to find a way to start a new scene to show the objects were not connected. This was very difficult to do and very time consuming. With the skills from this tutorial I can now do this through a much simpler method without wasting any time creating new scenes.

Positioning Tutorial

During this weeks tutorial we learnt how to easily manipulate an object into positions using key frames. This is a much easier way of moving an object to carry out certain routines or set of movements to look as though the object is carry out a certain task. For example, by moving just the arms and legs I was able to make a biped look as though its running and doing a long jump. The scenery around it could move to make this animation look more effective. Just by simply creating a few key frames to show significant movements it makes the animation process a lot easier.

Initial drawings - Ideas for Characters

I had no idea what character I wanted to create and portray in the animation so to give myself a few ideas about what characters I could create, I sat with pen and paper and made some rough drawings. Many of them were drawn late at night and made me laugh when I saw them in the morning in a more awake state. After looking at many rendered images and cartoons, I wanted to emphasise one part of each characters body element or feature to give it a little more character.

The picture below was originally meant to be a teddy bear but on first glance it looks like a frog with big eyes on it's head. I like the way the bear is small and fat because it makes it look cuddly.










The characters shown below is a cat. I do not like this drawing very much as it looks quite evil and sinister. It also looks very similar to the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. I want the character having loving characteristics and features.











This character looked better in my mind than it did on paper. I clearly went wrong during drawing the character. I wanted to create and flamingo looking character on a duck by giving it very large feet with thin legs.
















I also thought of the idea of creating a penguin. It has been done before in many cartoons but none of the cartoon penguins seemed the have cheeky personalities which is what I could image the penguin to be like. My drawing did not look the way I imagined it because in my drawing the character looks quite old and boring.













One of my main ideas was a rabbit. I wanted to emphasise the teeth of the rabbit to give it a goofy look. This would be great for a children's cartoon showing that beauty is on the inside. this drawing was very rough and could have looked better to represent the image in my head but I wanted to get an idea of how the teeth could be emphasised.















This is my favourite character by far. A giraffe is a very original idea for a character and I think it shows lots of personality. I will try experimenting with different looks for the giraffe and how it can look as an end result as I know the drawing of this character could be better and therefore make me more encouraged to go ahead with making this character into a model. I like that it looks slightly worried and nervous as it makes it look more lovable.

Lip Syncing Tutorial

In order to make sure that I am aware of how to make characters talk in sync with sound I did the lip syncing tutorial. I found this tutorial fairly simple but at the same time managed to embarrass myself by making faces at the computer screen without being aware of this. I think that next time I carry out lip syncing in 3Ds Max, I will do it alone in a room by myself to avoid embarrassment. I enjoyed doing this tutorial as it is a skills I've always wanted to learn. In past animations I have avoided using lip syncing because I did not have much knowledge of it. I hope to use this in my animation if I decide to have talking characters. I think this might work very well for music as well. If the character has to sing at any given point then this will come in very handy. The render of the lip syncing tutorial is shown below.

Research Continued

After looking at different 3D characters for inspiration through pictures, I took to looking at videos for more inspiration on the character design and the story line. I firstly started searched for short animation videos on youtube.com and I came across many short animations which were very good. One animation that I came across was very good and featured a well designed robot trying to change a light bulb. This was done by a student from Vancouver Film School.



I also came across a video which is the exact style I am hoping to achieve from my animation. I want to keep the characters, background and props very bare and minimal to keep the animation and the modelling simple. I want to focus more on showing the personality of the characters and the storyline. This video is shown below. I love the characters in this video as well as they are very lovable, very simple, yet have lots of character.

Mouth Morpher Tutorial

The mouth morpher tutorial was very interesting and helped me to learn a lot about how to animate a characters with easier tools. I tried a similar tutorial in the past and was very unsuccessful with making the mouth move the way I wanted it to. I did not understand the morpher modifier and how I could put key frames onto the timeline using this modifier. After doing this tutorial I am not more confident with animating a characters emotion and talking and can't wait to apply this technique to my own animation and models.

Some Ideas and Research

One of my many animation company's that inspire me is Disney Pixar. They have endlessly produced animations for all ages of all styles. Pixar began in 1979 and has been apart of many different productions and animations. In 2006 The Walt Disney Company bought Pixar and continued to make many inspirational animations and cartoons for all ages. Some of the well known animations that Pixar have created include Toy Story, A Bugs Life, Monsters Inc, Wall-E, Up and many more. One of my favourite Pixar characters is Wall-E, who is shown below. Throughout the animation the robot has many wonderful characteristics which show through his personality. The story of Wall-E is based around a robot which just wants to be loved and gain friendships.


















There are many other characters and cartoons which inspire me. I have a special interest in animals and insects. So many characteristics and emotions can be shown through a simple character design. Take the animals shown below as an example. Just thought a picture you can see so much personality and emotion in the animals. Animals are also very easy to model and though a basic model usual comes basic animation. If I have the opportunity I would like to focus on a complicated model with easy animations to make it look effective.

Biped and Physique Tutorial

In the second tutorial I learnt how to create a walk sequence using a biped and a mesh. I found this tutorial very useful as I learnt an easier way of skinning a mesh and biped. From past tutorials and projects I have always used the modifier "skin" which was very difficult to use and took such a long time set all the vertexes individually. With the modifier "physique", I was able to use envelopes to set many vertexes at once. This method was very effective and will be very useful during this project. The video below shows a rough render of the walk and jump sequence that I created during the tutorial.

Cartoon Eyes Tutorial

I was looking forward to getting started on learning how to make detailed features and animation of a cartoon character. I started the tutorial on "how to make carton eyes". I actually found this surprisingly difficult as it showed how to use many features and tools that I have never heard of before. At the end of the tutorial it explained how to put a helper point target on the eye and set a rotation motion. At this point in the tutorial I got very stuck and did not understand what I was doing or why I was doing it. Setting a motion on the eye didn't seem to do anything to the eye itself and did not look like it would help with the animation. The picture below shows how far I got with this tutorial.














After this tutorial I think I may have to look into the motion panel more to find out what features are available and what they can do.

Initial Thoughts

After looking at the brief and finding out that the project would be based around children's characters and cartoons I was thrilled as children's cartoon characters have always been something which I have been interested in.

In past modules, I have purposely looked into children's cartoon characters to try to involve them in my work as much as possible. My last project focused on Aesop's Fables. For this, I based the design of the characters around the children's television program "Pocoyo". The image below shows the characters I created for the Aesop's fables project. This project was very successful as I enjoyed spending time making the characters mesh perfect and creating a calming theme with the scenery and lighting.
















I am looking forward to starting this project and learn new things based around character animation. I am hoping to improve greatly on my skinning and animation skills as I have not had much of a chance to advance my skills in this area during other projects. I am also hoping to put my design skills into action through drawings and ideas.