Modelling the Mongoose

I'm a bit behind schedule and I haven't posted a blog post in ages but the animation is still underway and I am in the process of modelling the mongoose. Soon I will add Blend Shapes to the mongoose so that it can have multiple facial expressions on the same model easily. I will go more into detail on that part when I have finished the mongoose. I have almost finished the body, just need to work on the paws, tail and eyes/eyeballs.

Rocket animation (Week 4 - 6) - The animation!

I finished the animation from a Maya scene given on Maya, where the models were already completed and textured. The lighting were also already made. I took into account the research and tried to give the rocket an irritated look. The rocket was already rigged but I put an IK handle on the 'leg' of the rocket so I could move it up and down easier.

I feel as an improvement I could have put more character into the rocket and some parts of the animation, particularly the part where the rocket looks at the green light, could have been made slower. Anyway, here it is:

Let me know what you think!

Rocket animation (Week 4 - 6) - Research and Storyboard

I decided to go home over last week to concentrate on my work. There's no internet connection at my parents' house so I didn't manage to update last week but now I have an animation to show you!

We were set a task in class to animate a rocket conveying a certain emotion that we had to choose out of seven. I decided to choose an angry emotion for the rocket, but instead of the rocket appearing openly angry, I wanted to do something subtle and have the rocket be more of an irritated type of angry.

First of all, the smart thing to do would be to research irritated characters. The first character that came to mind was Donald Duck, who frequently gets angry and stressed.

You can tell from this image that Donald Duck is irritated because his fists are both clenched, his eyes are frowning and he is in an aggressive pose. His mouth is clenched shut and his arms are held back behind his body with his back turned towards whatever he is annoyed at. This shows that he is restraining and isn't full on mad, but more subtly irritated.

Another character I looked at was Squidward from the cartoon Spongebob Squarepants.

 
Squidward is a character that gets frequently irritated and annoyed, so he is a good character to look at. His hands are on his hips and his pose is a straight vertical line, making him look defiant. His facial expression with the half closed eyes, frowning mouth and one raised eyebrow shows that he is not impressed.

After researching irritated characters and the poses and body language which conveys how irritated they are, I created a storyboard for the animation of the rocket.

I could have probably improved this storyboard by showing more emotion in the rocket and perhaps more steps. The next post will be about the animation itself.