Giraffe Body and Legs

The giraffe's legs were very difficult to model. I was unsure of how they should look so i created two different models to see which one looked better. I made the legs by applying to symetry modifier to the body and using the extrude tool to shape them. I decided to use the thin legs as I wanted to create a tall and goofy looking character instead of a small and cuddly one. The legs took quick a long time to make because of the detail on them. They needed to be a specifica shape to look good.

Elephant Nails and tutu

I made the elephants tutu my cloning the body and then deleting soem fo the polygons, when a had a hoop shape I then extruded the edge and mvoed the vertexes to make a tutu effect. This was very easy to make. I then attatched it to the body.

After I made the tutu, I came across a big problem. One of the arms had become severly distorted and it wouldnt let me undo it. Because of this I thought it would be easiest if i remade the arms. They did not take very long to do. I later found out that the mesh was distorting because of being linked to more than one object.













The Elephant’s nails were very simple to do as I just simply created a multi/sub object material to create the different colours for the nails and the skin and applied it to the arms and legs. I then moved the vertexes to create arches for the nails and then selected the polygons and changed the polygon material ID in the edit poly modifier. I thought that the nails gave the elephant and very nice realistic effect.













This is the final image of the elephant. I am very impressed with how it is looking at the moment and I cant wait start animating.

Giraffe Eyes, Nose and Mouth

The eyes of the giraffe were quite difficult to make because I was unsure of exactly how to make them look. I started by following the tutorial step by step. I made the eyes using a sphere and adjusted the hemisphere to give it a pupil. I then made the eye lids using the same technique and created a material for the eye lids. It was going very well until the eye started becoming misshapen. I fixed this problem by removing all links and FDD box. The eyes eventually were all made into the shape of a sphere, which meant that the eye lids easily moulded around the eye balls without distorting.













I then wanted to make the mouth to set a shape for the giraffe's head. I began by using the extrude tool in the edit poly modifier to make a dent for the mouth and extrude the lips outwards. This was very easy to do because I had symmetry tool applied to the mesh so I only needed to model one side of the giraffe. I did have to slightly remake the front of the face before I used the extrude tool as I had many the head from a sphere and there was triangles at the front of the mouth which would have been very annoying during modelling. I deleted all the polygons and created new ones to make the mouth modelling easier to do.













I then began to make the nose. This was very difficult to model as I had no idea what shape they needed to be so I completly guessing. I wanted them to be fairly big so I over exagerated them a little.













This is what a rendered giraffes head looks like at the moment.
















I then wanted to add the teeth to the head to give the giraffe some expression. I wanted the giraffe to look slightly goofy so I wanted the teeth to be as big as possible. I made the teeth by using the line tool and making a mesh.













This is a rendered image of the giraffe after making the teeth. I love the way he looks slightly goofy. But i still think this could be improved.
















I decided to add two goofy teeth to the front of the mouth to improve the expession more. This made a big difference and completed the look of my giraffe.

Giraffe Material

When I applied a material to the giraffe’s head, the material looked distorted and uneven. I tried selecting “box”, and “sphere” on the UVW map modifier to see if it would make a difference but it didn’t seem to do anything. Instead I chose the UVW unwrap modifier and edited the material by clicking on “edit” and moving the vertices. This was a very tedious process because I did not know which vertexes where which. It took a while to select the ones I wanted and edit it without distorting it more. I could not use the “relax” tool, which I normally would because it only messed up the vertexes more.

Elephant Eyes

The elephant eyes were very easy to make, however, I could not get the look of the eyes right. I had to experiment with many different shapes and sizes of the eyes. I used the tutorial that I completed a few months ago to guide me with making the eyes. I experimented with different hemispheres and colours but none of them seemed the right shape for the elephant's cuddly, baby look. I eventually picked a shape and created the eyes using the same technique as the tutorial. I made the whole eye black to give it a cute look and gave it grey eyelids to match the skin. I then used the mirror tool to duplicate the eye to make the other one.

Elephants Ears

The elephant ears were surprisingly easy to create. The soft selection tool came in very useful when shaping the ears. I started by making a sphere and squashing it using the uniform scale tool. I selected the edit poly modifier and began reshaping one ear. In order to make sure they were shaped correctly, I made sure that the "Ignore backfacing" box was unticked, as I have made this mistake many times before in the past. After shaping one ear I used the mirror tool and selected copy to make the second ear on the other side of the head.

Character expression/body language

I came across a website which me to understand exactly how I can find out how to animate my characters based on their emotion and the scene they are in. The website (link below) says that if you do not know how to animate a certain expression then act it out. This might come in very useful later on to get new ideas and to understand how to express emotion through body language instead of facial expression.

http://www.netplaces.com/cartooning/once-more-with-feeling/body-language.htm

After planning how to characters will move and the storyline, I looked into how I could portray my characters through body language. I want the elephant to look as cute as possible so I want to give it a waddle when it walks to make it seem short and cubby, as this is seem as a cute feature. The giraffe needs to look dopey and slow, so maybe I could tilt its head and many it tall and lanky with lowered eyes.

Storyboard

For my animation I wanted to focus on the elephant trying to reach an apple in a tree. I made a storyboard to make sure I know what I'm doing when it comes to animating and rendering. I am not very advanced with my drawing skills to instead I wrote out a storyboard below.

1.Elephant walks in casually and notices a red apple hanging from an old tree. The Elephant is curious by this and becomes determined to get the apple form the tree.

2. The elephant walks up to the tree and realises that he cannot reach. He tries several times to jump up to get the apple but had no success as the elephant is way too small to reach the apple.

3. Meanwhile a giraffe see’s the elephant desperately trying to reach the apple.

4. The giraffe walks over and nudges the apple until it falls off the tree.

5. The elephant is happy to have finally got the apple.

Research into expression

When researching into character expression and movement I came across a paper which helped me to understand the many different ways I can portray a characters emotion through movement instead of facial expression. I wanted to do this because my character does not have many facial features and I want it to look as cute and possible, and in order to do that I do not want to animate the face.

The paper specifically highlights many human gestures which can be simulated to show an emotion. For example, it says that posture is a very important way of expressing emotion. If the character is hunched over and looking down it means they are sad. Also, if the character waves its fist is shows anger. Another one is if the character is biting their nails then it means they are nervous. Many of these expressions and movements can be shown in my character to express how the character is feeling without moving face features. One of the reasons I do not want to move the characters face is to keep a sense of mystery. Also, many children can relate to a quiet character because many children are shy and prefer to communicate through pointing or through body movement etc.

Wen-Poh Su, 2007. Modeling Expressive Character Motion for Narrative and Ambient Intelligence Based on Emotion and Personality, MS, MFA, Adv.Grad.Cert.IMD, BA (1st Hons). Queensland University of Technology.

In order how I could portray my characters emotions I also looked at many different children’s cartoons to get an idea of what children can relate to and how I can integrate that into my characters. I looked at one particular program called “Dexter’s laboratory” where the characters movements are all over exaggerated and sometimes put into slow motion. It also plays sounds to go with the characters movement to make them seem more exaggerated and noticeable. For this I know I need to exaggerate my characters movements in order to express emotion and catch a child’s attention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-NyPj4iAU0

Modelling the giraffe head

When I started modelling the giraffe's head I found it very difficult. Without a guide to shape and model the head with, I found it very challenging to get the head into the right shape. I started by using a sphere and deleting half the polygons. I did this so that I could use the symmetry modifier to make sure that both sides of the giraffes head are symmetrical. I then stretched out the sphere to make it look more like an egg. Gradually I selected each edge and clicked on "loop" to select all the way around the sphere. I then used the scale tool to make the circumference of each loop smaller until I had the shape which is shown below.
















I then tried to create the giraffe horns (I don't quite know what these are called). I did this by using the extrude tool after I picked out two polygons from one side of the head. I extruded the polygons twice to make sure I could shape them earlier. I could have also used the connect tool to create the same effect. I then reshaped the polygons and edges individually until they looked realistic. The head as a whole looked very jagged with a "lego" effect so I thought it would be a good idea to apply a meshsmooth modifier to make the head look smoother.

Modelling the Giraffe

I thought I should get a start on modelling the giraffe to make sure the texture and shape of the giraffe matched the elephant. I started by making a "bean" shape by making a sphere and reshaping it using the edit poly modifier. I then used the soft selection to shape the body more.

















After a long time of moving the edges and polygons around until I created the perfect shape, I then made a small tail at the back and made sure it stuck out this time for later when adding the bones. I did this by using the extrude tool.

















This is a rendered image of what the giraffe's body looks like at this point. I am very impressed with the shape and look forward to being able to create the rest of the giraffe to see how it turns out.

Modelling the Elephant

I started by creating a basic egg shape by using a sphere. I wanted the body to have a larger belly area and smaller neck area. I used the edit poly modifier to make sure the shape was how I wanted it to look. I then created a foot using the same process but with a cylinder instead of a sphere.

















The foot came in very useful for duplicating to make the arms. I made the arms so that they were slightly shorter than the legs. At this point the elephant looked very weird and very unlike an elephant, however this plan would work out because it would be good if I created a completely new character. I then decided to make the nose. I used the drawing I created of the elephant as a reference for this as it was very hard to get the shape right. Once I made it prefect, I remembered that the nose would need to be sticking out to allow for fitting the biped into it and adding constraints later.