Bah, RAM. You (suck)

My laptop has been under the weather seriously this week and has hampered my output big time. I’ve now discovered that the problem is that my top RAM slot is faulty and whenever there’s memory in the top slot the laptop will not switch on. So for the moment I’m running my laptop at half speed, until we finish for easter when it will go back and have a new motherboard put in.

Despite that i have managed to get my dissertation finished this week along with all the technical jibber-jabber of of acknowledgments and the bibliography and other bits and bobs. just in the process of collecting images and deciding on the final presentation and it will be done.

After the horror week I managed to get to work on the waiter model I’m making for Café de Beignet. I’ve managed to make his hair as well as polish up his facial topography and in the first part of next week I’ll have his body finalised.

I am however lacking a new character for this week but with only General Monkey and ‘The Navy’ to complete now the end is in sight. Lets hope things go smoothly until Easter.

Above: first stages using duplicated curves to block out shape.
Above: Curves are lofted and manipulated to make the basic form of the hair
Below: Waiter model as it stands with fairly clean topography and combined into one mesh.

Term 2 Week Six, that’s not catchy…

A slightly later reflection than usual after switching my sights onto getting y dissertation finished over the weekend. But here’s the week that was week six in review.

Animation went out to our contributing animators this week to play with the rigs and get some generic walk and run cycles for the big group scenes so I’ve been giving lots of feedback guiding the artistes towards what we’re looking for. I had a few technical issues early on in the week but they were quickly eradicated, and I’ve been getting good feedback from those working with the rig. I’ll be posting some new animation soon just don’t want to overload the blog which is very tempting.

Lots of producer director work to do this weeks also what with keeping in contact and prepping the project folders, sorting out naming conventions and guidelines that goes with coordinating the number of artists we have animating. We’ve also been on the hunt for boxes and other materials to make the live action intro possible we’ve ‘sourced’ some wood for the ground plane which Caspar should go to work on making concrete pretty soon. I’ve been in contact with both Vinnie and Sjors this week (who has linked to us from his site which is great) asking for some MvsR style tape for the boxes, and after I attempted to draw the expressions for the characters myself I’ve asked Sjors to sketch some reference for me, collaboration is fun. Here’s what I have so far with expressions.

Keeping the trend moving forward I’ve also managed to make the ‘SjorBot’ based on his original designs from brickboy.com and is our new character for the week. My plan for next week is to get my dissertation finished as well as finally giving over the waiter model to Team Doughnut, watch this space.

Memory just in I also made the weapons for the army grunts this week and followed some tutorials to work out how to get illustrator files into Maya to create the intro logo, dear me I have been busy.

Your Weekly dose of Wunderland

Just a quick update this week only one new character to show off somewhat of a remake of a classic, welcome the tuned up Monkey Assassin. Seeing as he’s more of an agent in the film I’m thinking it’s a bit inappropriate to keep calling him assassin, new names on a postcard I’m thinking agent A. lots of rigging and settin up character sets this week as well as doing lots of dissertation work no point putting up boring pictures about that.

New things for this week, Outlaw Animation is an amazing book that I read in a day this week, read it to regain faith in the idea that creativity will always reign through. Avenue Q rocked on Saturday, I love Muppets and always have I’ll try and add a pic just to keep things interesting.
The internet is for...blogs?
P.S. Having loaded that it's pretty easy to see where my interest in these types of characters grew from. i'll probably get in trouble for calling them muppets as well. it rocked i don't care!

IV the George

After a short bust of dissertation early on in the week it was crunch time for the model I’m making for The Stamp Collector. After a long slog into the weekend I finally had George finished off. I think he’s quite a nice model although he is covered in triangles – the book told me it was ok, I wouldn’t normally leave them.

In review it’s been largely a modelling week nurbs and polys. The hair was a pain as Maya lost one nights work on it. I enjoyed making his specs possibly more than I should have. The UV mapping was a bit of a drag but I did my best and got the whole character done in a day which can’t be bad.

The week also ended with another new character for Wunderland, everyone welcome SteamBot, an older model than we’ve seen so far he’s powered by coal, yes he is. They’re supposed to be made of paper so I can have them powered by whatever I want!

enjoi