Unit 66: Pre-production log (3D animation)

Safa Radwan. Unit 66

You work for an advertising agency that has been approached by a travel agent specialising in activity holidays which include safaris, backpacking, snorkelling, skiing, snowboarding, etc. The advertising agency has been asked to design a new, original character for the children’s club activities.

The client will be targeting people who have an interest in activity holidays and will be able to view the character from a variety of different sources.

This character is to appear in all television, poster and internet advertisements. To help them with this task, the advertising agency has asked for your input in creating a suitable digital character.

Additional information should be included with your work that identifies the sources and permissions for the assets used. In particular, log any material needing copyright permission for it to be reproduced in the public domain.

The software I used was Maya to create the 3D model. I also used Google as a reference, and drew on paper. The tools to produce this 3D character are;

Mac computer, Maya (3D modelling software), Wacom Intuos tablet (for drawing concept art), Photoshop (art program I used to create digital sketches of the mascot)

The aim was to create a mascot character for children’s club activities. This meant it had to be cute/child-friendly so that it could appeal to the target audience (children). I started out with a plan on paper, presenting the idea for the character, key details, and different views (side/front/back) of the character.

Start date	Finish date	Activity	Assets	Resources	Products
30/10	30/10	Design a character/mascot	Websites, internet.	https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/character/sci-fi/low-poly-cartoon-astronaut	Storyboard
30/10	31/10	Storyboard	Paper/drawing	Google, paper, pencil	A fleshed out paper with drawings of my mascot from different angles
30/10	30/10	Finding resources	Google	https://goo.gl/mtJy9r	I looked at a lot of different pictures to better round my character
30/10	30/10	Using a reference	Wikia	http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/	I wanted my character to be small cute & child friendly

First I created spider diagram of sports that my mascot could do;

Create a range of visualisations for your planned character:

Here are different types of concept art of my mascot character, deciding what it could look like in varying shapes;

I had to think about what children would like and be appealing for them. It had to appeal to girls and boys, so I  wanted it to have a cool and cute factor to it.

Red- Here I made a few drawings of humans to decide how tall my character might be in size to humans, or if I wanted to make the mascot a human.

Last bit of concept art of my ideas finalised.

Final art + 3 views.

Create a range of visualisations for your planned character:

A fleshed-out paper with drawings of my mascot from different angles

Action poses/doing activities:

Alien inspired by space & robots. Has human characteristics

Assets used for my idea:

 - Via turboman on www.cgtrader.com

This image I used as a reference is under Royalty Free License (Royalty Free License allows you to use the product without the need to pay royalties or other license fees)– commercial use would require purchasing the image but as I only used it as a reference it is legal to use.

 - Via https://pre00.deviantart.net/da4f/th/pre/i/2011/171/b/e/spaceman_craig_by_simpsonsfan628-d3jfl9s.png

South park characters were also a good reference for my mascot, because they had cute round designs, and I wanted the mascot to be appealing for kids.

Rocket League (the game) was a big inspiration for me, as they were robotic cars that rode around and kicked a football.

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Animation wise, I looked at the movie, ‘Monsters vs Aliens’ because they had different types of monsters, aliens, and robots that I could use as a reference for how my mascot would move and act.

Use a range of software tools and techniques to create the character you have planned.

To create the model, I used a range of techniques, some of these are:

Extrude to modify my model, so that he could have a large body, a small head, and long antennas

(cmd + c) to copy and (cmd + v) to paste, so I could create body that was accurately proportioned

cmd + shift + 4 to take a screenshot and upload my images.

Test Plan:

Test Number	Part to be tested	What are you going to test	Expecting result
1	Colour	If I can colour the whole model in one colour	The entire model to be coloured in turquoise/green
2

Test logs.

1.   Before the test

1.   After the test

Successfully coated the entire model the colour I wanted to after selecting it all and mapping it with lambert.

Now that the character is finished I can identify the flaws with it. It is not very realistic, and doesn’t contain a lot of detail, however, this is not a big issue, as the purpose of the character model is to be a mascot for kids, thus it doesn’t have to be very detailed or realistic. Next time I could add more texture so it looks more like the reference photo, and my first sketches/storyboard.

One major issues in this design, is that the poly count is far too high. One way to solve this is to create the model from one object, and keep extruding it, so the poly count is not so high. I will have to remodel the mascot, and create it using this method.

After creating my first model (which was a failure), I started on my 2^nd model;

I had to identify what was working with my model and what wasn’t – I deleted the arms and antennas and decided to rebuild them.

Now that the model is finished, I need to start rigging it, in preparation for animating.

What I am doing currently is weight-painting:

Now the model is built and rigged, I can animate it.

 

The animation is around 30 seconds and has about 800 frames of animation. Although it is not perfect, it tells a story of Robo (the character) flying up into a rocket, checking how high he is, then flying a bit higher, and jumping off in a comedic fashion. The extreme sport he is preforming is called ‘Space Jumping’, and invovles the someone from outside the earth jumping out of a rocket and landing on the ground. This is the highest possible distance you can skydive, the current world record was set by Alan Eustace in 2014 – he jumped an insane 41.425 km from his shuttle. Below is a picture of what Space Jumping looks like: