WEEK EIGHT, Sorry it’s late, It had to wait, I was in a state…

Finally completed the waiter model for Ash’s film this week modelling for Monday, Tuesday and mapped him twice after Maya went crazy and got rid of all of the work I did on Wednesday. Here’s a pic of how the final model looked.

Then at the end of the week I had fun making the general monkey model and texture in Illustrator as usual although I did map the hat and work from a UV set for the first time on this film, I sold out and took the easy route. I think he looks cool tho let me know what you think.

A few of the stages his eyes went thru, getting more and more aged although I am fond of the Neanderthal, look in the first one.

I keep getting stupid comments about anti-virus software so it would be nice to get some feedback from whoever is looking at this stuff, as I get very disappointed when it’s just junk. I have loads of hassle putting the text in with the pictures as well so sorry if the formatting is a bit off at times it drives me mad.

We’ve received a lot of animation cycles this week as well, so many in fact I think I’m going to save uploading them until I have more time to spare, they are really coming along well, thanks to all those guys for helping out! And also thanks to Sjors who drew me up some expression sketches at stupidly short notice, he rocks!

For anyone that cares I finished my dissertation earlier today as well so once it’s given in there’s nothing but film work until deadline… and PPD, dammit.

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

Meet the new guys!

Things got rolling again this week and we’ve got two new characters to show off, meet WorkerBot and the Army Grunt. I’m especially pleased with my army guy as he took a whole day to create start to finish, I started drawing him in the morning and by the wee hours of the next day I was putting the finishing touches on his rig.

We also learned a lot this week children as we’ve been discussing Character sets and the Trax Editor with Jamie Perrin as well as looking into shooting part of the film in live action, watch this space for tests as we try to get our heads round it all. Monday was also a good day as we had our pitch for ROA 2008 and it seems like we’ll be a part of the festivities on one of the channels.

Until next week that’s all folks!

Week Two, Run Through…

My role as producer ran its way through this week again catching up with all the projects I’m involved in. George model has been moving forward after the slight delay of losing a days modelling work. Dissertation Researched sapped a lot of the week and I lost a couple more days to it than I would have liked.
I’ve started work on the texture for the character we’re calling WorkerBot firstly drawing the ideas on paper then drafting them up in illustrator. Me and Caspar also looked at some Sci-fi movie posters that we could parody somewhere down the line for ROA and the end of year exhibition space.