process of the ringmaster 1: eyes

As promised, here's the first of a series of behind the scene posts for the FLIP sting entry we made at Sector5 Studios. I will also use these to compare my skills with the skills i had when making Caged so expect a lot of comparisons.

For this post, I'll focus on the eye as there's a huge leap from Caged. For Caged, the eyes were shaded through basic material colours. For the Ringmaster, I decided to UV map and texture the eyes following the philosophy that the eyes are the first thing the viewer will look at in a character; so it was important for me to kick the bar higher that I set for myself with Caged by putting in effort in to the eyes.


Render comparisons of how they would look in their final state

The results were noticeable straight away but there is still a massive room for improvement as I was treating the Ringmaster as a test subject for texturing the eyes. For example, the iris can be improved a lot in its texture.


the ringmasters eye was originally going to be plain colours which I've labelled Caged style


The next big change is in the blend shapes. In Caged I created blend shapes for the pupil to increase and decrease in size but it still didn't look right. The reason for this was that the iris never changed in size. For the Ring Master I made sure to do this which meant extra blend shapes were needed for the iris, eyeball, and the cornea.



The difference is subtle but pays off in close shots as well as adding to the characters personality. In this case it exaggerates the ringmasters crazy personality with the blood shot eyes.

 Whilst there's a big improvement in the eyes in comparison to the eyes i made for the characters in Caged, there's still a huge room for improvement. Perhaps in the near future, I will have another comparison between a new project and the ringmaster.

You can catch both the FLIP Sting and Caged at this years FLIP festival later this month. For more details visit: http://www.flipfestival.co.uk/

New 3D project

Now that the Sector5 Studios blog is starting to reveal one of the projects that we are working on, I can at last start to talk about it...a little.

The Ringmaster was teased in a screenshot during the last company blog update. My role was to take the concept art designed by Matt Ayris and to translate it to 3D. This is the first time I've worked on a 3D character who I haven't designed myself and I can definitely see the advantages of it and already the character surpasses what I was able to accomplish in Caged.

As always I begin modelling with the head



The head completed and ready to have geometry mirrored. A rough hat is also
now added.

A great experience in this process was constantly getting feedback on the design and where to improve it which is something I didn't have during Caged since the designs were my own. I'll be updating this blog regularly over the next few days with more development info on this project which is now getting close to being completed.

Caged completed

It feels really weird but Caged is finally complete totalling at 4 minutes 50 seconds (including credits).

Really excited about showing it this Tuesday for the last presentation in my course (*sniff* If only the course was another year or two longer).

With the completion of the film ,my focus will now be aimed at it's promotion for the student show. With a poster concept ready to be printed, I can start designing the space I will get for the student show (hopefully with a life size cut out too)

Here's another screenshot of the film:



Enzo isn't happy despite his surroundings...



Caged Trailer now online!

With my film almost complete, I have uploaded the first trailer for Caged:



I will be re-editing and spending more time on the trailer once my film is finished, for now I quickly put this together to promote my presentation on May 10th. Can't wait!

got any more boxes?

Here's another final render from Caged, quite proud of this shot, the shadows really enhance this scene:

Enzo lands beside Bird as their journey begins...

Enzo explores the crystal caves

Another preview of what Caged will look like with this render of the crystal caves.

shiny eyes....

Here, Enzo has followed Bird to keep him safe from the vicious Overlords.

This screenshot is different in the actual film, which is using a different camera angle.

Building the World of Caged

Now in the process of building the environments and lighting ready for the final rendering.
Here's some test renders of what the film will look like in the end. Some of the metal textures like the minecart's a missing however:



intro scene



Enzo meets bird for the first time

Modelling True Overlord form

This was pretty simple to do, only difficult part during the modelling were the ear like things hanging at the back of his head. This was mainly the topology that I had causing weird alignment for the ears.. But that was solved pretty fast.



Also included the original concept art for comparison





I didn't bother modelling the belly button and other body parts similar to it as I'll do that through texturing like bump maps.

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My animatic has also changed again after the feedback I received (which were all awesome by the way). The biggest difference is the montage being cut out where it showed Enzo and Bird having fun over a long period of time as it caused confusion amongst viewers. This has now been cut out in favour of introducing Enzo's awareness to Bird's deteriorating health due to the atmosphere of the mines.

modelling the Overlord - Complete

Wanted to post this a few days ago but didn't get chance. Here's the basic model of the Overlord complete.



The Mechanical Overlord


Completely underestimated how difficult it would be to model him. Had to jump back and forth from "drawing board" and back to modelling as my initial designs were impractical. This was mainly the joints of the arms and legs. The arms were designed to follow a more organic approach and because they were close to the torso it wasn't gonna allow much room for the arm to move. The moment I would bring it down for a rest pose the arms would conflict with the torso. In the end I went with a ball joint that pushed the arms out a bit to also avoid any conflicts between each mesh.

The legs, which I'm still not happy about yet, were troublesome as I couldn't get the right shapes out of the thigh armour. here's hoping these legs move well. The legs will be quite limited in movement so I don't have to worry about the thigh's spikes conflicting with the torso.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the outcome and how close I've kept it to the original designs. As for the torso vents, I'll sort that out in the texturing phase and also decide if they are necessary.

All that's left now is to model the True Overlord which will a piece of cake compared to the rest of the models ( or maybe I'm underestimating it again, haha!)

Modelling the Overlord

Started modelling the Overlord now, heres a progress screenshot. His face was a more difficult than I thought, mainly because I kept changing my mind with how I wanted the jaw to be attached. However, since its behind the cloak / hood anyways the joint isnt important. I chose the route that would better assist the animation process so the jaw has a slightly more organic feel.



Overlords mechanical face



Modelling Bird - Complete

Whoa, this took longer than expected. Was hoping i'd get this done by morning but got confused getting the legs sorted out. i was also toying with the idea with adding the forth claw that sticks out at the back of the foot but chose to stick to my original design.

Really happy with the model, I just hope the topology on the wings translate well when animated.

Modelling Bird continued

With his face complete (His eyes are just placeholders for now), I've moved on to the body. This is slightly harder as I havent modelled a bird before so I'm experimenting alot with the topology for the wing as I need to mimic a hand with the three large feathers functioning as fingers. Will be interesting to see if my guesses work in the end.

I'm really proud with how his face turned out, I'm glad that I changed the eyes from what i had originally as these ones will allow me to give him better expressions. I'm also glad I didnt box model him, opting to model it by edges instead, it feels alot easier to sculpt the muscles in the face.

I wish he was real now and sitting on my shoulder, haha! :D

Modelling Bird

made a start on 'Bird' this morning:




Changed his eyes as birds generally have round eyes

 Having a lot of fun modelling bird, although I really hope choosing to model it by polygons pays off as I could have used a sphere to model from for his head.

Modelling Enzo - base model complete



Enzo's base model is complete, now all that's left is modelling the slave gear around him which isn't a priority at the moment. Would have finished this yesterday but the hand gave me a few problems, mainly to do with the aim of having a quad only topology; which for the hand I've never tried before (using a mixture of tri's and N-gon's).

Worked out a quad only topology through experimenting, hope it animates well. What it has let me achieve compared to hands I've modelled in the past, is greater detail for the palm muscles and knuckles. In theory it should allow the hand to crease and bend naturally in the palm which is needed as his hands will be seen alot when holding Bird.

Had fun modelling him, definately the most detailed animation that will be present in the animation. For now, Enzo will take a break whilst I start modelling the other 3 characters. :)

Modelling Enzo

here's a progress screenshot of Enzo's model. With the head complete, it doesnt take long to complete the body. After Enzo's modelling is complete, I'll move on to Bird's model.

Enzo so far