Early Cornelius

Here are some very early Cornelius es. I am experimenting with him at this stage. I've been trying to incorporate the bald head and fat belly into his design. Different faces have been tried and abandoned.


This is an early picture showing the relationship between Cornelius and Pocahontas.
I'm not happy with him yet. He just doesn't seem to be there for me. The design just hasn't clicked yet. More experimenting must be required.

Early Pocahontas

Here are some of my first Pocahontas drawings. I was trying to get that feel of girl who moves like a gorilla. Right now however, it looks like she has been living in the jungle for all her life. The general posturing of her is here though, both when she walks upright and quadrupedal, as is the small nose to eye placements.

This is a re-design I did on a piece of lined paper whilst at college. I made here head bigger to make her cuter and gave her a much smaller mouth. I pushed her fringe back for a few reasons.

1. It is more similar to how hair is done in stop-motion animation.
2. It opens up a face more and
3. Fringes are annoying to animate.

My particular inspiration for her hair is Sally from the Nightmare before Christmas.

Research from previous Post

Hi, these are pictures I would have put up in the previous post, but for some strange reason, Google blogger that day wouldn't upload images.

Most of these images are from Disney's Tarzan, a perfect example of gorilla animation. I can get a lot of understanding about how to draw an animate gorillas from this film. Also the film gives a good inspiration for Pocahontas, because I want her to move like a gorilla, and this is a problem the animator's solved for this film, and quite successfully I might add.

Look at the power of the gorilla in this drawing. This is what I need to capture for Cornelius.


Ah, Pocahontas' other inspiration. Lilo's design is so cute and appealing, I can't help but be inspired by it. In the film Lilo and Stitch, they used the round designs of the world, to create a view of the world, as if it was seen by a child. This might be a nice angle to take, to accent London Zoo's sense of childlike wonderment and discovery.

New Production Schedule and a New Brief

I have recently received new information about the project that means my initial production schedule has to be changed. Unfortunately, texturing is required which means I have to allocate time for it. Unfortunately, I don't believe there is enough time this term to do everything so, even though I really wanted to, I had to cut the 2D Animation Test part out of the schedule and give that time over to texturing.I have included a copy of the project brief I have written for this course. I hope I can fulfill all it's expectations.

Daryl-Rhys Taylor Project Brief 19/1/2008

It is very similar to the brief C exhibited in the CVA 204 Course brief but with a few minor changes to allow me to specialise in the areas of 2D conceptualisation and Animation.

I am going to design and animate two characters for a possible animated advertisement for London Zoo. I will be using a style that reflects traditional “Claymation” techniques but using Maya. The character descriptions are

Pocahontas Billiams – “Seven years old, relaxed and well-knowing. She wants to be a gorilla.”
Cornelius - “A middle aged silver back gorilla, the most civilised and sensible occupant of the zoo by far.”

The characters will be modelled to a maximum resolution of 10,000 polygons and will have basic texturing. Each model should have a basic rig for animation.
Support work for the characters will be provided. Developmental drawings, pose sheets, expression sheets, model sheets that show front, back, top and side and a fully coloured final version.
Short animated sequences will need to be completed in order to bring out the personalities of the characters.

It is my hope that by the end of this project that I will have designed and animated two appealing characters with interesting personalities.

Research

Recently I have bought this Character Design book by Tom Bancroft. In it he states the first step to good character design is to create the basic shapes from the character descriptions and do lots of research into what you want to draw.

So the first thing I did was create the basic shapes below. For Cornelius the description states he is civilised and sensible, so he is probably very restrained and proud. If you look at silver back mountain gorillas (I chose a mountain gorilla because they have darker and furrier coats), they are very powerful. However, it also states that he is middle aged, so I thought it might be a bit funny if he had got a bit fat and bald in his old age.

For Pocahontas, she's about seven and more relaxed. She therefore probably takes her time, doesn't overexert herself. Big Point here, she wants to be a gorilla. In my mind, if she wants to be a gorilla, maybe that could be shown by allowing her to move like a gorilla. I am going to experiment with making her arms a bit longer and more gorilla like.

There is a lot of research coming up so sorry if it is a bit much.

When I decided to go this route, the first thing I decided to do was research up gorillas. Adult male gorillas a saddle of silver-hair appears on their backs. This hair is really short whilst their arm hair is really long. They reach about 5-6 ft in height, have an arm span of about 7ft 6in and weigh approximately 450-500lbs.

(These images were obtained from wikipedia)
Gorillas move around by Knuckle walking where they walk around on all fours with the weight resting on the Intermediate Phalanges. I have a diagram here to explain.
I also decided as part of my research to look up animations. I felt that Disney's Tarzan was my best bet for gorilla animation. Glen Keene's animation of Tarzan in that film was so cool and Young Tarzan will form a good basis for Pocahontas Billams. The Claymation style wanted in the brief I believe is more of a Plasticine feel gotten through the texturing stage, rather than the character design stage. Claymation doesn't mean you have to have the Aardman mouth. These Images come from either Disney's Tarzan Special Collector's Edition book or http://theartofglenkeane.blogspot.com/2006/05/tarzan.html.

I have also got some scans of drawings by Andreas Deja of Lilo, obtained from the book Lilo and Stitch: Collected stories from the film's creators. Lilo has that relaxed feeling required for Pocahontas and she is just the cutest little girl in an animated film.

Introduction

For this project I have a selection of questions to answer:

Do I work as an individual or as part of a team?
Personally I feel that I would rather work as an individual this term as there are a lot of things going on this term, with this Contextual Studies Presentations and Post Production. However, I am not a good modeller and rigger, so I could probably use the help of someone who is better in that area, to model my characters.


Which of the four possible areas do I concentrate on?
A) 2D Conceptualisation
B) Character Animation
C) Visualisation (and modelling)
D) Visualisation (texturing and Rendering)
Since we are required only to submit two of the exercises, I will choose 2D Conceptualisation and Animation. I don’t have much interest in modelling and texturing. I like drawing and animation and I want to be the best I can be. This is why I want to focus on those areas; I want to be a better animator. I want to work in that field. I want to be good like Glen Keane (a very lofty goal to obtain)


Do I follow on of the briefs set by industry or follow my own?
I really don’t want to have the hassle of creating a brief 100% from scratch. It’s a lot of hard work and anyway, if you take one of the industry briefs, it’s obviously more like what you get in the real world. Brief C: The Character Design brief I thought was interesting. It has a nice style to mimic “Claymation” and the characters are reasonably well described. Unfortunately, the entire brief seems a bit unreasonable for just one person, i.e. me. The brief calls for five separate characters to be designed, modelled, textured, rigged and animated. I will not be able to design and animate all those characters in an eight-week period, also considering all the other subjects I have to do. Also I have to consider the fact that I do not want to specialise in modelling, rigging and texturing. I think it is most reasonable possible for me to design, animate and possible model and rig two characters. Anyway, the way I see it the two most important characters in the brief are the little girl and the gorilla. They are the most interesting as they have a connection. I have recently been to London Zoo and saw their new gorilla exhibit and you can get really up close.
Hence in my brief it is mostly exactly the same as the Character Design brief, except I am focusing only on the girl Pocahontas Billiams and the Gorilla Cornelius. I hope to design them and at least have some 2D animation tests completed by the end of term. If push comes to show, I hope to model them in a rough form, not finalised mind you, for some Maya tests.

I have included a copy of the original brief below.
I also have sorted out my production schedule for this project.
I believe that the brief I came up with reflects industrial working practices, as

a) it is based on an industrial brief
b) In most pitching sessions I believe that final character models will probably not be ready and rigged yet and
c) Animators in CG productions never deal with fully realised models anyway.

In the end I hope to have some entertaining character designs that meet the brief, and some interesting 2D and 3D animation tests to show how they will move and react.

Hi

This is my first post for this new CVA 204 blog. Here is where I should be specialising and perfecting my animation skills. I hope it all goes well.