Adaptation B: Crit Feedback

In yesterday's crit, it was agreed that getting all 6 buildings modelled and then making an animation with them, would be a challenge and that the buildings shouldn't be able to move. It was decided that I should take one of the buildings/characters and should make a high-res model turnaround. Phil mentioned the idea of having a weather transition so it will go from day to night and so you can see lights turn on/off and even see candle lights flicker. This is a very interesting idea that I am looking forward to doing. I then started thinking about the idea of including snow as it would be very suitable for a Charles Dickens building, although it may be a bit of a cliche.

I was given the choice of any of the 6 characters, and as I have progressed with it more than the others, as well as it being my favourite anyway, I chose the Scrooge building. As it's a turnaround, I will need to draw both side views and the view from the back. I have also been thinking about the idea of the building been displayed on a wooden base, similar to ones that are on trophies, but where it of course still applies to the Charles Dickens "Universe".

Adaptation B: Interim Crit

Adaptation B - Interim Crit.pdf

Adaptation B: Re-Design - Ebenezer Scrooge

For this re-design of Scrooge, I have tried to add the "sleeping hat" as well trying to include some things that relate to the character. I don't think there's a whole lot different between this design and the initial one and so I will need to work on this a lot more.

Just like what I did with the Miss Havisham re-design, I have put both designs together so that I can see the differences/similarities and see what works well and what doesn't. Like I have said, there isn't much difference as you can clearly see.

Adaptation B: Building Layout + Story Idea

Using the 6 intial designs, I have organised them into the layout in which they'll be organised. This is only really to show what building is next to what, and so the distances between each building is something I'll work on. Just like in my very first drawings, there will be more than just these 6 buildings in the animation, and so there will be walls, fences and street lamps in between some of them.

My thinking behind this layout was so that it could lead to more of an interesting story and show the relationships between the characters:

Scrooge doesn't like to share his company with people, especially children, and so he restricts himself from as much contact with others as possible.  However, Miss Havisham, the ghostly figure that she is, haunts Mr Scrooge, as she is very much aware of his "past", where interacting with ghosts is concerned.  Miss Havisham's opinion of Oliver is split into two. When Miss Havisham looks over to Oliver she is often reminded of her adopted daughter, Estella, and her relationship to a boy named Pip. Although Oliver is scared of Miss Havisham's haunting appearance, he feels slight sympathy for her and realises what she has lost. Oliver is protected from the evil figures of Fagin and Uriah Heep by the strange, yet comforting, Mrs Gamp. Despite her lousiness and "tipsy" manner, Mrs Gamp cares for Oliver and treats him to the food that he so often craves. Fagin and Uriah Heep, the dastardly pairing, persistently mock Oliver and his lack of strength, as he requires a drunk old woman to protect him from them. In some instances, Scrooge joins in on the laughs and also mocks the low class Oliver - something that neither of Miss Havisham or Mrs Gamp appreciate.

Adaptation B: Oliver Twist & Uriah Heep - Initial Designs

 

As I hadn't yet done nitial designs for Oliver and Uriah heep, I have done these designs in the same method as my other initial ideas. The reason for doing this is so that I can have all the buildings having an initial design and so it would make more sense in the crit on thursday. Obviously because of this these aren't that useful, but do give an idea of my own first ideas behind each of these two characters.

These were a lot more tricky compared to the other four and so they have very unrealistic body/building shape. As Oliver is different to the other characters in that he's the youngets and is genuinely nice and friendly, I wanted to show by drawing him differently by being less "skecthy" and being more smooth with the outlines and details.

When I progress with these designs, I should try to make Oliver look quite cute and innocent, and a character that the audience will like. Uriah Heep, on the other hand, should look ugly and quite mean, similarly to Fagin.

Dynamics 1: Intro to Dynamics PART 12 - Instanced Objects - Tutorial

I have finally got round to rendering my attempt at the instanced objects tutorial. Very straight forward, and so I had no problems when completing it.

Adaptation B: Re-Design - Miss Havisham

 

In today's tutorial with Alan, I got some more help, which I really should have asked for earlier. It's been much harder than I thought to get buildings designs from the research/exercises, that I've done so far. In the tutorial, Alan did a few quick sketches on Photoshop as to how a Scrooge and Miss Havisham should be based on/designed. As I have said in a previous post, the idea of Miss Havisham's building being based on a wedding cake is something that Alan recommended.

For this re-design, I have tried to avoid simply basing the design of the building around only original drawing. By looking at wedding cakes online and thinking about Miss Havisham's presonna, this is the design I have come to. Perhaps, it isn't very clear that it's a wedding cake and to others it wouldn't be clear that this is Miss Havisham. That is obviously something I'll continue to look at.

 

Below is an image showing both the initial design and this re-design, so that I/you can compare the two, and see what works well and what doesn't:

Adaptation B: Structures/Spines of the Buildings

In a similar way to finding shapes in the other exercises, I have tried to look at the overall pose and structure of each character. This will help me when redesigning the buildings as they show me how each building should be stanced/leaning.

These look a bit strange, so below are the original drawings, yet again:

Adaptation B: Finding more shapes in the Original sketches

With original drawings

In friday's tutorial, Alan showed me another way as to how I could find shapes in the original human form drawings of each character. Although there are some more interesting shpes and structures, there isn't too much different between what I found in the previous exercises. Also, I think they act as outlines rather than findind the forms within the structures of each pose.

I will continue to explore shpaes and forms from these images, as well researching each character in more detail, so I can get designs that suit each character better than my initial designs for 4 of them.

Without original drawings

Adaptation B: Things associated with each Character

In today's tutorial, Alan said that I should write down things that I would associate with each character. So far my designs don't fully represent their specific character and so they should have some key features that we'd expect from them. Alan spoke about caricatures and how I should exagerate/show their obvious physical traits.

I have made these mindmaps for each character, where all the words can be linked to that character. As you can see, some of them have more words than others and most of them are describing the personality of the character rather than the appearance, so that's something I will continue to look at:

Adaptation B: Fagin & Mrs Gamp - Initial Designs

Using the same methods of editing and drawing as the other 2 initial designs, I have created my initial ides for Fagin and Mrs Gamp's Building. These were a little more tricky than the previous designs and so they took a bit longer to do. 

I wanted Fagin's building to be quite siister looking and being very crooked. I think this needs quite a bit more work to do as I think it's a bit too upright and isn't very scary. Mrs Gamp, however, is the opposite. I wanted it to look friendly, which I think it does. As Mrs Gamp will be looking after Oliver, it needs to look very 'caring'. When drawing this buildin, I was looking at images of cosy cafes as well as cottages. 

I'm quite pleased with the Mrs Gamp building as it looks friendly and, in that respect, is much different to all the drawings that I've done, so far. Like I said, the Fagin builidng still needs a fair bit of work done to it to make it look like how I want it to.

Pipeline 2: Game Assets PART 2 - UV Layout - Tutorial

I have finally got round to completing the UV Maps tutorial (The second tutorial in the Pipeline 2: Modeling page). I had some problems at first, but after asking a few people I realized what I needed to do next. Pretty easy to follow other wise.

Adaptation B: Ebenezer Scrooge & Miss Havisham - Initial Designs

Following on from the previous post, I have done these quick designs for Scrooge and Miss Havisham. By looking at the shapes that I found and looking at the details of all the drawings, as well as drawing inspiration from specific shops, I have managed to produce two designs which I actually quite like.

For the scrooge building, Alan metoned the idea of the building being a bank, which is of course refering to the character's greed and lust for money. I wanted to keep the pose in tact, as I will intend to for all the buildings, but I wanted it to look like a bank also. The images of Banks nline all seem to have pillars running down them, and so I thought they could be in place of the legs. The arm holding the candle was based on Jack Skellington's house in Nightmare before Christmas. I then made sure that it looked like a building from the Dickensian era, which I personally think it does.

Miss Havisham was a little more difficult. I wanted to make her building a Wedding/Bride shop, but with a scary/haunted appearance. It's by no mean a 'nice' shop, but it's not particularly scary yet. I wanted to keep the building's shpe in line with the wedding dress that she wears and I think that shows.

On a somewhat different note, one of the things that I've always wanted in my work, or improved, is how pictures are presented. Often, and this is the case for posts in this project, I end up posting plain black and white line images. As I always draw on paper first then photograph my work, so I can edit it in Photoshop after. While doing this, it got to a point where it looked more interesting, I thought. I then changed the background colour to a very light brown. That is the image at the top of the post. I really like this and think it looks better than the one below. Hopefully, I can achieve the same effect with the other designs.

Adaptation B : Finding the main Shapes & Skeletons

  

Original Drawings

Like I said in the previous post, I am still some way away from getting the overall shape/design of the buildings. I have continued to try out some techniques as to how I can convert the human form characters into buildings.

One of the things that I did was going round the outline of each sketch to get a single shape, but having them still resemble their characters. Some of them look quite odd, but I think some of them have some building like shapes to them. One such case in Miss Havisham where her head/vale create a shape like a triangular roof. Scrooge also has a chimney like arm. I have put the original drawings at the top of the post to show the similarities.

 

All the Characters

Fagin, Mrs Gamp and Scrooge (Left to Right)

Miss Havisham, Oliver and Uriah Heep (Left to Right)

As the buildings will need to be rigged, I drew out a rough rig skeleton for each skeleton. I feel that this will be helpful as it will allow me to know where I can create joints in the building. Obviously, the buildings shouldn't have a human skeleton rig, but this is a nice way for me to know where movements in the buildings would be.

 

 Rig (Outside)

Rig (Inside)

I think I have done enough for some of the characters so that I can start to try and create the buildings. Some of them, I imagine, will be easier than others, as some of the exercises that I've done have given me little ideas behind the design.