Minor - Reflective Statement

For my minor project submission I am generally happy with what I have achieved. Mostly I am happy with how much more comfortable I feel working within maya. I am disappointed that I was unable to complete both characters for the animation, but this was due to running into issues and problems while creating the first character. Even though these issues meant I could not finish the second character in time, they have allowed me to refine my character creation skills in maya. I have learnt simple tricks and processes within the character creation pipeline that I believe will allow me to create my second character in under half of the time it did to create my first.
With the overall look and feel of the character I am very happy as he fits the style of animation I was aiming for perfectly. The use of the 2d facial rig worked very well with my character and I am happy I made the decision to build 3d eyes which can give the character more emotion, by being able to move the eye lids.
For the individual processes of character creation pipeline, i.e modelling, UV'ing, rigging etc. I found that at the start of this project my strongest aspect of this was the character modelling. But after working on the character and the amount of time I spent rigging and skinning as well as adding controls, I feel as if it has almost made me a stronger artist in these aspects.
I have tried to put in extra effort this project as well, experimenting with different types of rigs and controls, working to find which on will be best suited for my character. An example of this is I experimented with an IK/FK rig, creating this on it own to see how it works and how I could apply it to my character. From doing this I noted several issues I encountered along the process and came to the conclusion that I was better off sticking to the arm rig that I know, to save time and allow me to complete the character in time.
With the pre viz I feel as if I am happy with the majority of my shot selection, but I still need to do some editing to get the timings better to fit with the pace of the animation, but still to show what is needed to be shown on screen.
The area in which I felt I struggled the most was the 2d drawing side and the initial character development. I knew how I wanted my characters and world to look, but I find it very difficult to portray these through concept art and drawings as I have much more of a 3d mindset. I have thought about this issue a lot and although I have tried to work on my drawings, the rate of improvement is at a slow pace. An option that I am considering for pieces of concept art, that will be needed in the next project, is that I could collaborate with an artist, giving them initial sketches and referencing to explain how I want the piece to look, then work very closely with them throughout to ensure I would have a much more accurate and professional looking piece of concept art.
Overall I was happy with my minor project submission and I feel as if I am in a good place going into the major project, as a lot of this project will take place in maya and be a lot more actual production and use of the software, rather then just the pre production of the animation, which was majority of the minor project.

Minor Project - Submission Post

The Garbage-o-Saur Minor Project Presentation by Ian Garling on Scribd

Minor Project - Junior Character Turnaround

Minor Project - The Garbage -o -Saur Pre Viz Animation

@Alan - Maya Keyframe Issue

I have been trying to create the turnaround for my character but for some reason when I set keyframes it causes they eyes to have an offset from the body. The character can be moved around with the world control with no issues but as soon as a keyframe is set and I scrub through the timeline this causes the eyes to break. I am unsure why this is happening and am unable to render character turnarounds without being able to fix this. Help would be greatly appreciated.

Minor Project - Final Character Render

I still need to work on the noise reduction and the render settings but I am struggling a little bit in Arnold. For now I am happy with what I have and will go on to create a character turnaround to display the finished character.

Minor Project - 2D Mouth and Eyebrow Rig

I have finished created a 2d mouth and eyebrow rig for my character. All I need to do now is to sort out the shading network for the textures so they will look how I want them to when rendered and my character will be complete.
Once the character is complete I am going to go on to create a pre viz, then to start modelling the Garbage - o - saur.

Minor Project - Character Texturing

I have been having some issues with the texturing of the character as when trying to create normal maps my laptop crashes. Also I have forgotten where to plug in the ambient occlusion node into the character texture, as well as how to create a rim light shader using aiStandardSurface. I will be coming into uni to ask Alan how to do these to get my character looking as he should when fully rendered.
I have created the base texture maps for both of the costumes my character will be wearing and applied these to the model.

Minor - Blink Rig for Junior Character

After creating the controls for the character I have gone on to add colours and restrictions to these controls. I have also added a simple head rig with an eye follow rig. I used blend shapes to create a blink rig as well, to allow the character more eye movement. When creating the blink rig I realised I had too little geometry in the eyes. So I un-skinned the original head, saving the skin weights, and then added the geometry to allow the correct movement for a blink. I will now go on to texture the character and then finally create the 2d mouth rig before rendering some turn-arounds of the character.

Minor - Character Rig Body Controls Set Up

I have created the controls for the body of my character to allow me to easily move him around. Originally I was planning on using an IK/FK switch with the arms but whenever I created it on the right arm this would cause the hand to flip 90 degrees. I repeated the process several times and looked over my joints and rig set up but could not find the reasoning for the flip. So I decided to go with the standard arm controls that I have used previously. Also as I was working on the spine bend I noticed my ribbon spine had broke again. I had to create a new ribbon spine as I was again unaware as to why the original one broke, making it difficult to fix. But this caused issues with skinning due to new spine, Maya did not recognise the joints when it keeps the history for unbinding, so would not let me bind to the skin with this history. But after a bit of research and looking into the different skinning tools, I found the export skin weights tool worked for what I needed. It managed to keep the skin weights for the rest of the body, meaning I only had to re skin the three joints in the spine, rather than the whole character. I will now go on to create a rig for the head to allow that to move, an eye look rig with blink functionality, before going on to texture the character and adding the 2d facial rig.