Week 5: Rigging

I've starting the rigging process of the film. The stick will be first as he will be the easiest character to rig. I've already got the skeleton set up, and am now beginning to create controllers for him, and so far have the reverse foot set up. The cop's skeleton is binded and the painting process will be awkward considering the cop's geometric shape, since I want a limited influence going from his hips to his actual body. So really, the legs and arms should have no influence on the cop character at all. The body should be simple if I follow the joints per edge loop on the spine. He should be a wiggly character and I think I want him to have a dance somewhat like this.

 I think the way Jake dances here is hilarious and when the cop eats the candy in the film, I want the background to fade to black, so that the cop is the only character seen, then he'll start dancing in a way like this, and the background will have various colors going on. I think the background color change can be done in Maya, and if not, it could be done in After Effects.

The Skateboard rigging will start soon. I just have to figure what's necesary for his complete mobile movement, and what type of rigging I want to use on the trucks and axels. The rest of his body should be somewhat simple.

I'm hoping to be done rigging in the next week and a half and start animating the characters soon. The vehicular movement is rather simple and really most of the film, the characters are in a car.

Week 4:Setting the Stage

I've practically finished modelling everything which includes the town, the two vehicles, the cop, the skateboard, and the stick. Within the town are several buildings, a school, some stores, and the streets are set up. The street light is modeled and will now be placed throughout the town. I added more background to the setting which are just large hills. I've decided that I will be using trees, with the maya paint effects tool which I've discovered to become very handy.

Now that modelling is just about done, I decided to start rigging. I actually started the skeleton on the cop and will soon bind him, weight paint him and make some controllers for his handles and etc. The stick will be worked on soon as he is also a simple character to make a skeleton for. Hopefully those will be done within the next week so I can concentrate rigging the skateboard which will be complex since he's an oddly shaped object with no real arms or legs.

I like this picture, it's kind of representational to what my town could look like with details, but it's much more simplified. The similarity I do like though is that it's a valley town, which is what I'm aiming for.

Week 3: Modeling Progress

So far for the film, I've just about finished the skateboard and book. I've also set up most of the town. For the town they live in, most of the buildings will look the same, all I'll really have to do is change building colors, and give them each signs identifying them. The school is complete and I had a sign placed, but it disappeared, that should only take me a minute to fix again. The car body is just about done, and I've started some minor work on the interior which is really just the interior body. Then all I really have to complete are the windows, side mirrors, steering wheel, dashboard, and openable glove box, and the seats, which shouldn't take me too long if I work hard enough. The third character, the stick, I'll be working with nurbs, just to give it a cool smooth geometry. He shouldn't really be too hard to model. So pretty soon, I'll start rigging the characters, and giving the cars locators. The cop car will really just be a duplicate, but with an added trunk, since the first car is a wagon, and also I'll need to add the lights. I'm hoping the cop car will look somewhat like this.

Week 2: Progress

So far with the film, I've already modeled the skateboard character, but it needs to be fixed in certain areas, such as deleting unnecessary edge loops. I've started working on the cop character, which I've changed a little bit, he'll be a hardcover book, so the pages are visibly extruded in, like a real book. I'll be continuing the modeling of the Town they live in and try and set up the building placements, then will add the roads, grass, sidewalks, etc. I've also started working on the hood of a car. I haven't thought about rigging yet, but the skateboard will need a special rigging because of how inorganic it is. The other two characters shouldn't be that bad rigging. And then hopefully soon I can play with the cel shading on the characters. For the skateboard, I was thinking about adding a decal on it, it's just a thought right now, but if I do, it would probably be a cartoony monster of some type, but I'd have to draw an original one, to avoid any copyright issues. I'd like it to look somewhat like this though. Or something else less demonic. I might just scrap the idea and have some sort of design going around the trucks and actual face/eyes.