Friday, 23 January 2009

Character clothed, haired and considerations on style

I'm finalizing the character now, I need to get onto the rigging stage so I can start animating. One consideration is the style, my Project Supervisor expressed concern over the soft nature of the current character vs. the more angular features of Imogen Heap and the synthetic nature of the track.

The current progress of the character is looking like this:


The main focus now is getting her moving, I can get on with rigging her, but the problem is how the envelope and facial rig will be affected by any changes to the geometry if it needs changing. To attempt to combat those issues I will need to have multiple versions of the character. For the moment she will be staying like this, I can UV map the model later if needs be. I could use mudbox to change the style of the character or keep her at a lower (or no) sub-division level. I'll probably have a few versions of the character, or 2 or more sets of shapes to use with the shape manager, depending on the subdivision level.

Granted this is a rather crude approach (simply not sub-dividing the model). Another option is editing it in post, I'll have to look into that later, but for now I need to get her moving.

Friday, 9 January 2009

Dissertation (again) and another change to the project

A short update even though there hasn't been one for about a month, my dissertation is now over 6,000 words but there hasn't been any progress on the actual model, rigging or animation

After looking into reference for Imogen Heap I found the video for her song 'Hide and Seek', after a meeting with my project supervisor and discussing the video I will now be focusing on the character alone and getting rid of the environment and the short bit of narrative that surrounded the performance. I will also be considering the lighting and style of the video, I may choose to light it in grey scale with a Lambert shader or simple black and white toon shading. While this is something to consider the main agenda is to get the model ready for animation.




Note: the format of the video is actually in portrait