During pre-production, in preparation for rigging the centaur character, I undertook various rigging tests so that I knew the inner workings of the rig before production began. Each test tried something new with developing my knowledge and the skills I needed to create the centaur rig. Here I developed my understanding of the IK systems by building a set of IK arms with rotation and elbow controls. Overall they worked fairly well and the skinning...
Fae Designs
09:12 / BY Matt Watson
To grasp a better understanding of the Fae character I created a couple sketches with some little variations and changes. As a result, I feel it has aided in my development of the character now able to distinguish between his different movement styles, poses and designs. ...
Further Pre-prod
16:00 / BY Matt Watson
Still going on with the centaur rig, will have something put together in next few days to show but for now I thought I'd post up a bit more pre-production. This is a little animatic put together for the Fae's attack animation. Generally I think it works fairly well and gets the idea of the forward thrusting strike motion but some further work on the return motion would probably be ideal. I am hoping this...
Character Designs
12:52 / BY Matt Watson
Leading on from my caricatured designs, I created a few of them using the Morpheus rig testing out how they would appear in CG working within the limits of the rig itself. Mostly, I managed to replicate the core ideas and themes of each character fairly well having to saturate the exaggerated nature of a few of them for a more workable design yet still retain the character's presence and appearance. ...
More Pre-Prod
18:00 / BY Matt Watson
I am into production now working on the centaur rig so thought I'd continue to post up the work I completed for pre-production. These are a couple of caricature designs I made as concepts for the character in my short acting piece. Originally I was aiming at creating an older male character, probably around late 50s, but continued to experiment with different ages, personalities and shapes. In the end, I have decided to create a...
More Pre-Prod work
07:02 / BY Matt Watson
Still keeping busy with all my uni work, I'm currently working on a rig for a character in our upcoming game project, I'll post that up in the next few weeks once it's finished but so far its looking good, much better than any previous rigs I've done! This week though I thought I'd show off some more of my pre-production work. These are a couple of little facial expression sheets I did for a...
Canvas for Animation
13:05 / BY Matt Watson
A very brief little animatic I created for my single character acting piece I will be starting in the coming months. I just wanted to throw down some rough movements and poses to get a better feel for the character as a whole playing with subtle changes in the way he holds his hands and grasps the objects around him. Below, I have included the piece of dialogue I will be animating to. I chose...
Bark Basher Designs
11:46 / BY Matt Watson
As part of my production I will be animating the Bark Basher character (modelled by Fen Evetts) throughout the game providing a range of different weights and movements to best portray the character. The Bark Basher is a natural predator that acts on instinct and becomes the final boss character for the player to defeat. He uses his two huge 'shields' to protect himself from attacks whilst also using them as battering rams to deliver powerful blows...
Thumbnails!
08:35 / BY Matt Watson
These are a few of the thumbnail sheets I created for Pre-Production. They play around with some of the ideas I had for the Fae's animations so looking specifically at the attack, death and damage animations I would be dealing with. As it turns out, most of these animations are now being done by others and the overall design of the character has changed since then but these little sketches still provided a good grounding...