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.

Character Further Development

After Jo's comments I decided to develope the character of foxy further:

Name:  Foxy

Personality:  

Appearance:  Luxurious, shiny black fur, beautiful green eyes that turn black and white when Foxy is angry.

Goal:  To get the fish before he gets her.

Home:  A little house in the country.

Affiliations and Allies:  Foxy is a lonely character, not many people understand her wicked sense of humour, she tends to form fake friendships to get towards what she wants

Enemies:  The lodgers fish. Foxy find his whole look very annoying and would love to hit him in his goggly eyes!

Likes:  Foxy enjoys days lounging around being care free. She always keeps herself highly groomed and enjoys long baths. No microwave meals for Foxy, oh no, she only eats gourmet with tons of milk to wash it down.

Dislikes:  Foxy hates anyone who gets more attention than her. One person in particular is the lodger's fish Sonny. Unfortunately Foxy was told she has slight paranoia around 3 years ago. She is convinced that the fish is going to kill her, she is not sure how but determined to get there first. 

Powers/Abilities:  Has the ability to look fabulous at all times, even in the mornings!

Fate:  Foxy will be kicked out, occasionally being allowed to come over and eat.

Quotes: " I can resist everything but temptation"is

Sonny's Fish bowl

I wanted to create a simple glass fish bowl for Sonny to live in. I did this by creating a sphere and taking the top third off.

I then found a tutorial which showed me how to give the bowl a glassy effect. I opened up the material editor and renamed one of the materials glass, I then assigned it to my bowl. i set the ambient and colour diffuse to black, the specular level to 275 and the glossiness to 45. I then went on to set the falloff type to fresnel.

In the material editor I added a new raytrace map in the refraction slot and set the level to 80. I then enabled supersampling to the glass so that the reflections were smooth and not grainy, I selected MAX 2.5 (after rendering theimage the glass still appeared grainy so this will be modified). I went on to add some planes so that once rendered an idea of reflections was viewable.

 I then cloned the fish bowl and applied a push modifier with a value of -0.5. Within the material editor I then made a copy of the glass material and named it Glass Interior, I enabled the 2 sided option for this material and made sure that the original glass material did not have this selected. I then assigned this material to the clone.

Tutorial Reference: http://www.3dvalley.com/tutorials/creating-realistic-glass-material-in-3ds-max/

Fish Bowl

Sonny's Home

Sonny

Sonny

And so, Sonny was born...

I was able to find a tutorial online on how to create a fish. This gave me a good basis on how to get started with Sonny. Firstly I downloaded the reference images from the tutorial and set up the planes for the front, side and top of the fish within 3D Max.

I then created a box with the length as 20.138, the width as 47.105 and the height as 12.746. I moved the box so that it was covering half of the fish face. I then moved the vertices over to cover the whole face and adjusted them to give it shape.

I made the box see through so that I was able to see the planes. I then selected the planes and adjusted the vertices to fit the plane.

I continued to do this up to the mouth. I then selected the front polygon and moved it by the Y axis to bring the front of the fish face forward.

I continued the shaping of the fish by moving the vertices of the top of the fishes body.

Below is an image of the finished body:

I then wanted to add some fins. I created the top fin by selecting the top for edges and extruding the upward, three times. I wanted Sonny to have two top fins so I created them at the same time. By moving the vertices I was able to give them fins some shape.

The side fins were created in a similar way. I selected an edge towards the lower end of the body and extruded them out. The tail fins were created by selected the end polygons and using extrude and bevel to bring them outwards. I then moved the vertices to give the fin shape.

I created the eyes for Sonny in the same way that we did in our tutorial (post is below)

I then went on to add material, and a mouth which was done by again extruding polygons.

Reference for the tutorial: http://www.3dk.org/tutorial/3ds-max-Modeling-a-Golden-Fish.html

Examples of Previous Cat Characters

Lady and the Tramp

Video Ref: http://youtu.be/fxpN2XrYDLM

These characters are very slinky in their moment which instantly gives them a sneaky look. They have a pointed chin and large ears. Their colouring continues the black and white theme which was noticed in previous research. Their eyes are large and brightly coloured, this is something I hope to achieve with Foxy's eyes.

Cinderella

Video Ref: http://youtu.be/7YKIVyDmewA

Lucifer is different to the previous two characters. He is a big cat, almost giving the impression he is spoilt. there is nothing delicate or slinky about him, he looks brash and bold. With this cat he has his claws on show and whips his big fluffy tail back and forth. Again, his eyes are bright and pointy giving him an evil look. Although he is not black and white he still follows the dark theme.

Garfield

Video Ref: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo7QtcyhVrI

The character Nermal from Garfield is a cute little kitten with an evil side. This almost makes the perfect character as you can't help but think she is cute even though you know deep down she is pure evil. the character is grey which is again a common factor among evil character. I like the fact that she has a personality which does not suit her looks which is something I could possible apply to my character.

Character Development

After considering my options with some of the characters I had sketched, I decided to develop the cat character further. Below is a bio for this character.

Boning and Skinning

Today we learnt how to bone and skin our basic body from last week. to do this I opened the body from last week in 3DS Max and under helpers selected CAT objects. I selected the body, went to object properties and selected the see-through option so that I could see the bones when adjusting them to the body. I then selected CAT Parents and created a rig at the base of my body. After this I added my pelvis and positoned it within the body, adjusting the width and length to fit inside. The pelvis bone is used as the hub to then go on and create the legs of my body. A colarbone was added to be able to adjust the legs accurately.

I then went on to move the legs about so that they fit within the mesh with as little excess showing as possible.

After this I selected the pelvic hub again and added a spine. I adjusted the length so that it ran to the shoulders. This allowed me to then go on and add my arms. the arms were the trickiest part as I had to adjust the length and move each section to allow it to fit within the mesh. This took the most time.

By selecting the spine hub I was able to continue the spine upwards to create the head of the body and fit it to the mesh. I did this by shortening the length of the spine which gave the body a neck and the lengthening the second spine hub.

I then went on to skin the character by selecting the body and choosing skin under the modifier list. Within this modifier I added the all of the bones that I had set up from the list. I had to make sure to add only the CAT objects to allow the skinning to work. after completing this I was able to move the bones and the body would move with them.

Using Colours

The use of colours with characters is very common. With the research I have done it is clear to see that the difference in the characters is enhanced with the colours of their clothes, eyes, skin etc. As with the research board I had created all the characters had a distinct link with dull colours with only a few that went against this rule.

Colours are often used with a semiotic meaning, for instance the colour red implies danger or a warning. this is something that is common knowledge throughout society and something that a child would be aware of too. Traffic lights use the colour red to STOP the traffic or pedestrian from crossing. This is drilled into everyone at a young age.

Another colour which implies a darkness is black. As with Darth Vader, his full clothing was black implying that his character is evil.

Sketches Based Upon the Research Board

Above are a few sketches for possibe characters. Using the features that I found most common within the 'evil' characters on my research board. The Thieving Penguin was an idea I had thought of based on the television series Frozen Planet where one penguin would steal rocks from another penguin behind his back in a very sneaky way. The Grumpy Old Man is probably a character that the target audience could relate to. Speaking from experience, there was always a grumpy elderly person who would ruin games that my friends and I would play outside. the same goes with the Scary Teacher, as a child there were many of these around. As I have previously animated a human character I feel it would be more interesting to use a an animal as the physical form for my character.

Further sketches:

Basic Body

The basic body was created from a box with 3 sections for the length, width and height this was then turned into an editable poly. The top row of the box would act like the shoulders so these were pulled out to allow the arms to be at a right angle. the box was then made longer to form the body. The bottom right vertex were moved in to give the angled pelvis.

I then went on to form the head by selecting the middle polygon and using the extrude and bevel tools to shape the head to the body size. i applied the same techniques to create the arms and legs.

From the above image you can see that the leg was quite spread out. I moved the leg in by selecting the vertex and moving them down.

I then used the mirror tool to create a full body image.

Research Board

After researching the types of cartoons and films that children aged 7-11 enjoy watching I created my research board. I chose the "baddies" from those cartoons and films and came across a few similarities. Below are a few things I picked out from some of the characters above.

Voldermort and Bellatrix-Lestrange

• Both characters are from the film Harry Potter
• They both have the grey, dull skin which is a common factor with evil characters.
• They both have long pointy fingers/nails like claws.
• Dark circles appear around both of their eyes.

Mr Burns - The Simpsons

• Pointed Features (nose)
• Beady Eyes
• Long Body and Hunched Back (Volture)
• Powerful (Lots of Money)

Umbridge

• This character is also from Harry Potter.
• Her skin is still quite dull.
• She has an obsession with the colour pink.
• Her expression is stern looking.

Darth Vader

• All in black.
• Gives a dark presence.
• Face mask has grilled section like gritted teeth.

Cartoon Eyes

In order to create the main part of the eye I made a spere and altered the hemisphere to 0.06 to create the iris. I then cloned this part of the eye and upped the hemisphere of the clone so that it reduced back to half way over the original sphere. Making the original sphere small gave definition and made the second sphere appear like the top eye lid. I altered the colour of this to make it more realistic and then went on to clone it, creating the bottom part of the eye lid. By rotating this part of the lid I made it look as the though both lids were covering the eye.

I then went on to add material to the original sphere, giving it a pupil. I did this by selecting the Multi/Sub-Object material in the Material Editor. This allowed me to keep the main part of the eye white and add the black to the pupil.

To be able to move the eye around and give it more shape I added an FFD Box. To do this I selected the FFD Box through create, spacewarps and then chose the option of deformable. I drew the box around the eye and altered the width, height and length so that the eye was surrounded by the box. I then went on to alter the parameters to 2x2x2. I bound the FFD Box to my eye by selectecting all of the spheres and binding them to the space warm. This allowed me to use the box to manipulate my eye into different shapes.