Conclusion

Overall i feel my finished animation was a success. It is just a shame that I could not have come up with this idea in the first place. I feel that I always set myself targets that are not really feasible and therefore take up much of my time which could be used for research or even production.

Marvin's characteristics are portrayed well throughout this animation but could be improved by adding more smaller and little movements ie blinking, more eye movement, more mouth movement etc etc.

In certain scenarios there is pinching within the mesh of the character, this was something that if i was to have some extra time i would be willing to spend this time to carefully use the physique modifier and envelope extremely well.

If i was to do this module again i would have a look at existing short animations over the Internet in order to get ideas flowing. This will give me a solid platform to start working straight away. I would ideally then be able to improve and change the existing animation that initially gave me that idea.

Rendering and Editing

From previous experience with rendering animations i decided to render in 1280 x 720 (720p). This is the lower definition of HD. I also went for the compressed version because uncompressed makes a 10 second file over a gigabyte and when trying to edit this and even watch this back on any computer lags out the system and therefore makes it extremely hard to work with.

I firstly selected the HDV option when Premiere Pro asked me to create a new project, from this i then selected HDV 720p30. This type had the following setting applied to it:

General Editing mode: HDV 720p Timebase: 29.97fps Video Settings Frame size: 1280h 720v (1.0000) Frame rate: 29.97 frames/second Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels (1.0) Fields: No Fields (Progressive Scan) Audio Settings Sample rate: 48000 samples/second Default Sequence Total video tracks: 3 Master track type: Stereo Mono tracks: 0 Stereo tracks: 3 5.1 tracks: 0 Submix mono tracks: 0 Submix stereo tracks: 0 Submix 5.1 tracks: 0

Simple editing techniques were used such as dip to black and dip to white for the transitions between different clips. Also i played back 2 scenes to get Marvin walking backwards and sped the clip up by about 400% i felt this added to the characters personality as this is when he just eats the cheese and staggers over whilst walking backwards.

The image below is of the video edited itself. The audio used is a simple but bouncy and fitting sound piece that can be found on the Internet and was a free download.

Making the scene

Once the character was created I then began to work on the scene creation. This didnt take too long and wasnt too challenging either. I started off by creating the room. To do this i created a large plane, and then added 4 boxes around it to act as the walls. In one of the boxes i created a small hole (this will be used as the mouse hole). To create this i added a capsule and then applied the boolean modifer to the wall and chose the capsule (see screen shot). This cut out the shape of the capsule that was in contact with the wall.



For the material of the walls i used the image below that i created using Photoshop. A small amount of noise was added to the colour of the wall itself to give a more realisitic cartoon effect.



Creating the mousetrap itself was the most time consuming, but this was just a case of making a set shapes and fitting them all together and adjusting their pivot points respectively in order to make the mousetrap seem like it works.

When it came to creating the cheese i used the same method for creating the mouse hole for the holes in the cheese but instead of using a capsule shape i used a series of different sized spheres.

For the lighting i used 2 omni nights in opposite corners of the scene, this made the scene very bright and got rid of shadows which would be unnecessary for this project.



Over all i am very happy with how the scene has turned out.

Modelling and Rigging Marvin Mouse

The model for the character was actually downloaded from TurboSquid. The reason for this was because the model had near enough the same requirements for what was required for Marvin.

Once this was downloaded it was then time to edit the model slightly to meet the desired state. The ears were made larger, and the nose was removed. Also the hands were increased in size as well.

Now the character was created it was time to start rigging him. I firstly set up a biped in the front viewport and dragged it out to the size of Marvin. I then turned on figure mode and edited the size of the bones to fit Marvin's body shape. With the bones looking in place it was time to add the "Physique" modifier to the model.

In order to attach the biped to the model, within physique I had to select the "attach to node" and then select biped01 from the object box. Now the biped is joined to the model.

To test how well the biped fitted the physique of the model I moved about the limbs of the model to see if it pulled the mesh out of shape. There were a few small areas where this pulling of the mesh occurred. At the edge of the fingers, and around the shoes the mesh was pulling quite badly. To sort this out I went into the physique modifier sub-mode and selected envelope. I changed about the radial scale and the parent and child overlaps of the bone envelopes. This increases and decreases the area of which the bones respond to the characters model. As the character is symmetrical I only had to change one side of the model and then use the copy and paste-opposite tool to get the same on Marvin's opposite limb. Once these were all amended respectively it was time to make Marvin walk.

I used the following link to help me to create the footsteps for my character (https://vle.anglia.ac.uk/Modules/2010/EJ315001S/Module%20Documents/Character%20Studio%20%E2%80%93%20Biped%20and%20Physique.docx). I found this document very useful as i had not created footsteps before. I found it very simple as well as all was required for me to do was to click the "create multiple footsteps" button and the footsteps were created. With the footsteps created i click "assign inactive footsteps" this then made the footsteps active and Marvin was able to walk.

Redesign of project....AGAIN

With there being lots of trouble animating and not being able to get the slugs to do the things that i wanted them to do I decided to try a different chraracter. This time i decided upon a mouse.

My new character would have the following characteristics:

General Information:

Name: Marvin Mouse

Gender: Male

Height: 15cm

Weight/Build: Large belly, but skinny arms

Hair color and style: Bald

Eye color: Black

Distinguishing physical characteristics: Big ears, Big hands, walks with a limp

Distinguishing mannerisms: Greedy and will do anything for cheese

Age: 4

Favourite food: Cheese

Dislikes: Mouse traps and feeling ill

First renders of the Slug and scene

I have decided to give my slugs little arms and two beady eyes (which are the antenna's). I made the slug from a capsule, and modified it in many ways to get it into the position shown in the image below.



I drew out a line in the left view port. The shape was of the desired body position for the slug. I then used the Path Deform modifier on the slug, with a few tweaks in the shape of the line i was able to get the required position.

All was required after was to rig up the slug. I used bones for this, and used IK limb solvers. Once the bones and dummy's were in place i was able to apply the skin modifier to the slug. Using this i began to envelope the bones. As with everything a few tweaks were needed until i was happy with the final design. The slug is now fully rigged i am able to copy and edit the obesity of the cloned model to create the second, more fat slug :D

Once the modelling for the slugs had been completed i was able to start work on the scene. This is extremely basic as i don't want the attention to be taken away from the characters personalities throughout the animation.

I started off with a plane and made it 50x50 sections. Once converted to an editable poly i was able to start making little hills (in this case small mounds of mud). Bushes were added to give a better effect of a garden landscape as well as a cylinder with the normal modifier applied to it. The cylinder and plane both had custom materials added to them. These were created by myself in photoshop.

The redesigning of my project

Over the past few weeks i have been modeling and trying to rig up Gooey using the biped system. This has been extremely challenging for me as many problems have occured throughout this strssful period. The main error is not being able to set up my characters arms and legs how i want them to be throughout the animation. Therefore i have decided to scrap that idea and start over with a new design.

The new design i have come up with contains two slugs that are moving slowly over the mud/through weeds/bushes. The slug A is a thin and more athletic looking character who is able to cover more distance than Slug B who is fat and overweight. Slug A see's a bird and warns Slug B. Slug B laughs this off, until he realises Slug A is not joking. He tries desperately to get away from the birds area. Slug B thinks this is his life over and prepares for the worst by shutting his eyes as he hears the bird getting closer to him. The camera then turns to Slug A who has a smug look on his face throwing a stone up to himself before throwing it at the bird and knocking it over and saves Slug B.

I feel with the above storyline i will be able to portray the personality of both slugs throughout the animation.