Animation 2.9

The animation process is looking slow at this point, i am happy that everything looks like it is working now, after I spoke to Andy I found out that i scaled my bones down which apparently can cause that problem so I just did it again differently. But like i said its slow so I guess i need to persist.

The scene itself is looking good, I learnt a new technique for this project which is the use different channels for different materials so that you can give certain ones glow effects and such without effecting the whole scene. So I did this to give the background and the lasers a neon glow effect, well with the lasers I had to hide them until needed. And without a doubt this also makes my scene look much more Tron like so continues the inspiration. In the animation though I have come to use blue and red more, the virus that they have to deploy is red just like them and everything else that is carrying power is blue, at the end it will be shut down or changed colour thanks to them.

In the picture above I did thelast bit first as I was not ready to use them both together yet, here he is about to quite literally punch in the code to take over the area.

Using Adobe Premier Pro I edited the footage so it would look better cut and I could cover my animation from different angles at once then cut them in.

The 3Dmax work

At the same time that I designed the larger bulkier version of this character I also put the brother into 3D max, no bones have been placed yet but the chance to make him into 3D has made me make a few modifications even further, for instance I put in a backbone the is tilted back at the top, it is like a tube and runs from the shoulders and down to the pelvis, this makes him look like he is being held up almost, which incidentally makes him look more robotic.

In the picture above I am cloning the leg and arm so that the body is more symmetrical.



The antennas on his head and spikes on his back are going to react to emotion, this will help give him more of a voice because of the lack of facial features, this will usually happen when he is surprised or alarmed, the antenna would flatten down when he is sneaking or sad.

Here I am attempting to texture some parts of it, one this I am defiantly going to use is this red wires texture, it was one i made for my unreal level project, it is really just a picture of my wardrobe screens gone through Photoshop. There is a blue, red and colourless versions of it, i am going to use it to signify who is the enemy and who is ally. The two main characters will have the red wires on their body, and will be show flowing throughout them, where as most of the environment will be the blue colour.

This is the rendered version of the male character without textures which looks better at this point. What you cant see here is a double set of metal plates to protect his back, all the parts on his body will be linked back to the limbs so they will follow them as the move.

So its been a while

So its been a while since the last design of the smaller character and after lots of thought the other to accompany him is a bigger version of hi,self equipped with armour and heavy weapons, and also female. She is designed with all the original ideas in mind. I tried to make her look like she was based on the same model or design as her brother but modified or constructed as a different model, all hopefully told to the viewer without narrative and just through there appearance together.

Notice how she differs but some of it has just been modified, like the feet claws pointing forward instead of two at the front and one at the back, she would look almost the same if it wasn't for the metal plates covering her legs and shoulders, this added with the different pelvis (that has less moving parts and so looks less officiant) makes her look slower but stronger. She also has a double laser weapon and a more effeminate colour scheme.

First Model

After a while I came up with this model of one of the characters, at this point I don't know what exactly I am going to do with it but this is what I had pictured in my head for the smaller one, even if it winds up only being slightly smaller. My idea has changed again based on this drawing and I think it is more likely to be completed this year compared to the last idea. This is the design I did in my sketch book:
As a lot of characters that sit at the centre of a franchise there is some kind of twist between them, like one is grown up and the other young or they are linked like brothers or father and son, for this i wanted to twist on an expected result, this is that this character being the stealthy, small weapons character it is also the male of the pair. The other to counter that will be female.

Animation 2

So when i was given my brief I had many ideas almost immediately, I went through a lot of phases of thought until I started to modify on an idea I had already. This was a game I did a few designs for, it was a FPS game which needed 2 people to work together to fight other enemies, but it was most based around the multiplayer game where partners fought other partners. The reason it was co-op was because one player controlled a large bulky tree climbing organism with heavy weapons whilst the other controlled a very small robot which ad to stay near the larger one for safety, it had precision weapons and cold infiltrate because of its small size.



So from this I changed it to another extreme based on size that was more fitting for the brief, it involved one player controlling a huge robot which slowly moved but could launch hellstorms of explosives and attack buildings and everyone else one the team was deployed from it as a spawning base as small soldiers with assault weapons, the robot and other machinery would rely on them to take down things that threaten them and the soldier would rely on the machines for cover and heavy fire.

These ideas are a lot I know but I have come to start these projects off with big ideas because its always easier to scale down which I expect I will be doing a lot of with this.