Evaluation

The overall process of creating the characters and putting them together has been enjoyable. Researching int o different characteristics was the most interesting as there are things that people do without even realising they are doing them. To apply those characteristics to a character almost makes them human.

When I had decided to use a cat and a fish for my characters it seemed natural to me to have the cat as the baddy. This is possibly because I own a cat and know just how evil they can be. Once processing the animation I almost felt as though I had missed a trick and maybe should have gone with the fish being evil. This is something I will consider in the future. Instead of looking at a task with one though I will expand it to consider all posibilities.

The skinning and boning was the hardest part for me and it is annoying that I had to leave this out as i feel it would have given my character more life. Although I used the eyes and mouth I feel that having the cat sneak around the bowl would have given more insight to the character and how she acts. It was most annoying as during the lesson when we were shown skinning and boning I felt I had got on with it very well and felt as though this was shown in my blog post. Perhaps if I had of persisted and tried again it may have worked but after several attempts and hours trawling the internet for an answer I felt under pressure to get the animation done and so left it out.

I focused on the eyes the most and wanted to show the characters chilling look. There are several points within the animation where the eyes widen and the nasty stare turns worse. I chose for the eyes to change colour as I felt this would be far more effective.

I chose the Four Seasons music to play in the background as I felt it worked well. The music gives a calming sense at the same time as an exciting feeling of what is happening.

The animation did not come together as well as i had hoped but unfortunately there was nothing I could do about it. If I had allowed myself more time then perhaps I would have worked out an alternative way of making my character move.

I do find using 3DS Max difficult to use and it is possible that my lack of skills did not help towards the outcome of the animation. All being said this is the one 3D module that I have truly enjoyed doing and I feel that if I build on what I have learnt I could create more outside of University.

Putting the Animation Together

I unfortunately tried and failed miserably with the skinning and boning of my character Foxy. this caused a great ripple effect in putting the animation together. i followed all of the steps after rigging the character but for some reason the skin would not attach to the rig. I then tried to use physique instead but this just squewed the character meaning that all of the body parts were shooting across the screen. As time was passing by I tried several times to get this right but it would not work (for reasons unknown to me) and so in the end I had to make a decision. I had to leave the rigging and focus on putting my animation together as best I could.

The above are selected scened from the animation. It was disappointing to not see the main character move which did not make the animation work as well as I had hoped. I did however continue to focus on the eyes and make the most of what research I had gained previously from looking at the body language.

Once I had collected my snippets of animation I uploaded them into Premier Pro to be edited:

Making Foxy

To create Foxy I followed a simple box tutorial. this helped me create the main body and head. I made a box and extruded polygons for the 4 legs and tail. I then went on to extrude a bevel a head for the character. By shaping the original box, moving around vertices, this gave the character a cat like arch to the back and more shaping to the legs.

To create the ears I extruded several points to the top of the cats head. once turbo smoothed these looked too small so I changed their length and angle. 

At the moment foxy looks a little like a small dog. By adding eyes to the character it became more clear as to what animal she was supposed to be.

The eyes were created in the same way that we were shown in an earlier tutorial. By making them this way it meant that it would be easier to manipulate them later on. I gave the eye a cat like shape, making it more angled. The eyes were the main focus for the character and so the green colour that I applied needed to be bright and garish. 

Body language and Personality

Although Foxy's character is a cat, I felt it necessary to also look into human behaviour with the same traits. I decided to look at the common factors of a humans negative body language, this generally involves:

• Shoulders drawn back
• Persistent eye contact (staring)
• Arms crossed over the chest
• Sweating
• Hands clenched to make fists
• Swaying back and forth
• Grinding Teeth

Ref: http://www.bodylanguageexpert.co.uk/what-negative-body-language.html

From the list there are only a few that I could apply to Foxy's character. In particular I feel that the persistent eye contact would be perfect as she will be focusing on Sonny throughout the animation. Standing to close to someone also came up, this is something that makes people feel uncomfortable. As the eyes seemed like an important part of negative body language I decided to look into it further.

From the research I conducted I found that narrowing the eyes gives a scowling impression, this instantly gives the feeling that you do not like the person you are looking at. Which is ideal for foxy and Sonny's relationship.

Ref: http://www.marcandangel.com/2008/07/07/25-acts-of-body-language-to-avoid/

Overall I decided that by combining the body language of a cat and that of a human my character would give an impression more suited to the villainous ways.

Cat Body Language

Ref: http://www.messybeast.com/cat_talk2.htm

The above body language image shows what a cats face looks like when reacting to different things. The main character Foxy will have her ears pricked forwards in an alert way throughout the animation. Although she is paranoid that the fish is plotting to kill her, she is fearful. She will approach him whilst he is unawares and carry out the plan she has had in mind from the beginning.

Observing my own cats body language has allowed me to clarify the way in which a cat thinks and acts. My cats face always looks innocent even when she is up to something. She will sit and sleep but never stop listening to what is going on around her and even when you think she is asleep her eyes will open at the sound of anything she doesn't like. She is always on guard. 

I also have a fish tank and my cat will sit and watch the fish for hours, I often wonder if she thinks along the same lines as Foxy. Her eyes dart around taking in every movement from the fish.

Music Choice

Four Seasons

Storyboard

Below is my storyboard for my animation. Foxy is pretending to be asleep by the table where the fish bowl sits. She is sneakly watching the Sonny the fish as he goes about his day in a merry way. Foxy hates this and the paranoid side to her believes that this is Sonny's plan to lure her into a false sense of comfort.

Foxy decideds to kill the Sonny before he gets to her first. She jumps up onto the table and daintly moves around the fish bowl whilst Sonny is unaware of the danger that is lurking. He goes to turn around when he notices Foxy with her nose pressed up against the bowl, grinning with her full set of pointy teeth. this alarms Sonny and he starts to feel scared. foxy then trys to push the fish tank so that it gets closer and closer to the edge, the whole time grinning to herself about how she had come up with this cunning idea.

All Sonny can do is stare down at the bottom of his bowl as it gets closer to the edge.

One last push and Foxy has completed her mission. Little does she know, however, that her house mate has just walked through the door and catches the bowl before it hits the ground. Foxy quickly pretends that she is asleep on the table, unaware of what has been going on whilst throwing evil stares at the fish. " Until next time" she mumbles.