Facial Expressions

Today we learnt how to animate facial expressions. It is easier than i thought, but it still took quite some time to do. And I didnt even animate it correctly. i was meant to add another key frame in between each expression and make it go back to its original expression. This way the transition between expressions becomes more seemless.

This tutorial has made me realise how much work, time and effort this project will take. I really have to get a move on and create my models so I can get to work on the animation right away!

Tree Progression

Here is the almost complete model of my tree. As i mentioned in a previous post, i have gone with the cartoony style. So there was no need to make the tree as realistic as possible. There are 1 or 2 problems with this model though...

The first problem being that where the arms and ears are on body of the tree, there are smooth curves joining them together. I would prefer it if they werent there but I am having trouble trying to remove them.

The second problem is that the head of the tree had several more polygons than the body of the tree, meaning that I cant weld the 2 together (unless there is some other method of joining them together that I am missing).


I tried creating a new head for the tree with the same amount of polygons but it just doesnt look as effective as the first one. If worse comes to worst, I will have no choice but to use this model. However I am wondering if I even need to weld the 2 together, as the tree wont be moving much.


This is how I picture the final model to look like. I am not sure how to go about doing the face though. It will be moving in the animation, so i am not sure if I have to create it in 3D and stick it on, or map a face onto the body in the materials section.

Once the model is complete, I will post the step by step process of how I created it.

Fire Animation

Today we had the choice of animating 3 different things. A fire, a ball moving in a box of water and some waves. While none of these 3 things really apply to my choice of fable, i decided to do one anyway as its all good practice.

I went with the fire one as it involves logs, which kind of relate to the trees in my chosen fable. It turned out better than expected and was easier than i thought it would be.

I am not 100% pleased with the lighting, but this was the best i could do.

Storyboard

Here is the storyboard for my chosen fable, The Man and the Tree.

While the storyboards follow the fable closely, i decided to add another character to it. I included a huge tree which acts as the leader of the trees. I just thought that it would suit the story well. Whether or not i decide to keep him in the final animation will depend on the time.

Chosen Fable: The Man and the Wood

I have decided to go with The Man and the Wood as my chosen Fable.

I had originaly thought that a realistic style of animation would probably suit this more. However now that i have had time to think about it, i believe that a more "cartoony" style would be so much more effective. This is because having realistic looking trees talking to a human would just seem odd. Especially if the whole idea for this project is to create an animation for a children's TV channel.

So i have decided to go with a more child-friendly design for the models. This also makes things easier on me as it means i wont have to put a huge amount of effort into making the models look super realistic. As long as the target audience can tell what they are meant to be, i can get away with a relatively basic set of models.

Basic Animation

In the last tutorial we were required to create a basic animation of a ball rolling around. It was actually a lot easier than i was expecting. Although to be fair, it was just a ball. Fully animating a human or animal will be so much more of a challenge...I better choose a Fable and make a start on the modeling!




I also had a go at creating an animation of the ball bouncing. The bounce didnt turn out as realistic as i had hoped, but i know that could be easily fixed. I think thats not too bad for my first tutorial on 3D animation anyway.