Digital skills reflection

NCI410 Digital skills
Acquisition and Contextual studies
Reflection/development work

For this project I was asked to design a character based on the description of being thin and lean with its own personality and then create both a 3D model of it in Cinema 4D along with a walk cycle.

For my first task I produced five character sheets of my character Flobby an anthropomorphic stork who is part of a basketball team of animals. My original inspiration for him came from two cartoon characters from different shows that I used to watch when I was younger, there’s big bird from Sesame Street and Wilt from Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends.

I was then introduced to Illustrator and learnt how to build a character out of shapes, bending the lines to create edges and how to design my own brush pattern. When I first attempted this technique I was given the chance of producing any character I could think of for the bean shaped body, so from the top of my head I decided to go with the head of a hippopotamus since many cartoons of that animal have been given a bizarre shaped head. I also placed a bowl of fruit on his head to not only fill in the top but to give off the appearance that he is dancing. Along with the rest of his body parts and facial expressions I mainly used the circle tool and square tool to save time making so many anchor points.

The stubby dancing hippo illustrator design

After that I was eagerly tempted to try and form my character Flobby in the same way of using the various tools and shape’s to build him. At first I found the pen and line tools a bit difficult to control especially with the direction I wanted to place them in, but eventually got the hang of it, the only thing that I was unable to do was merge the feet and the legs together since they were separate objects and I found it hard to bend his ankle properly. For the colour textures I mixed a collection of light and dark tones to make him look more attractive and separate his clothes from his body.

Flobby the stork Illustrator design

Once I had finished the illustrator design, I uploaded my fifth character design sheet of Flobby on to Photoshop then began experimenting with his colours a bit more to see which tones suited him better. After having coloured in every single position, I placed them all together on one A3 board along with his personality/backstory and a basketball background that represents both his height and talent, even though it took me a while to overcome the problem of arranging the background. After completing my first board I decided to produce another that displayed Flobbys different facial expressions, giving it the same background and added text to tell which one is which.

One obstacle that took me a while to get out of the way was dragging and placing his nostrils, eyes, pupils and mouth in the correct area of his face since the software believes it’s dropping it in the supposed space.

Flobby fifth design side position

Flobby fifth design front view

Flobby positions Photoshop edited

Character boards finalised

For my third task I was introduced on how to produce a 3D model of a character in Cinema4D. I began by first uploading the separate positions of my character to make things easier for me to guide my character’s outline, starting from the bottom of the foot while making my way up to the hips. During my first attempt to create the foot I accidentally used too many points to form the edges ending up with a messy outcome.

First attempt at making a foot

I eventually got use to the point tool and was able to make up half of the model along with using the extrude tool to create the arms, fingers, wings, tails feathers, head, beak and lastly the eyes. However i had to solve the multiple problems I faced when some areas didn’t quite form properly the way I originally wanted to such as merging the fingers tips together extruding the tail feathers and forming the heads bumpy like shape.

Main body half way finished

First attempt at forming the head with a square

I found forming the head extremely difficult especially with the neck attached to its base causing it to stretch but was able to move it on its own and extruded the eye sockets to fit in the eyes. I was originally going to use two spheres to make things easier but resorted to another extrude to save time.

Once my model was coloured in by dragging the selected material I was ready to start rigging it however a few complications arose while trying to animate it even though the head rotation turned out perfectly. The problems that occurred were the legs and arms kept on bending in the wrong direction and ended up leaving certain parts behind such as the wrist and ankle then again I think I added in too many extra points.

3D model coloured in and ready for rigging

Joint skeleton model

As I was half way through making my model I was shown how to build a joint skeleton within it so that I could animate it later. At first I used random shapes to form the body and then inserted each joint into every body part, eventually being able to add the goals and poles for the arms and legs to move. It took me a while to sort the legs out because I had accidentally placed too many joints within the knee causing them to spiral out of control, once that was fixed I was finally able to create the walk cycle using the key frames. I was planning to animate the spine to move up and down along with the head moving sideways but didn’t have enough time.

To give me a little aid in how to animate my character a bit easier I was shown how to bend the joints more professionally so that the feet, hands and head could manoeuvre more independently. As I went through the process step by step I found it both very helpful and having a lot to remember with the amount of controls and goals. Eventually I was able to rig most of the character, but had trouble moving his feet with the joints twisting around in the opposite direction.

Attempt at bending the legs and feet

Creating left arm control

All Joints and controls completed

3D interior design models

As part of a last minute task I was asked to produce and experiment with objects originally made as 2D mirrored outlines from illustrator and then uploaded on to Cinema4D.  When it came to making these household objects I decided to go along with something simple and made five separate items a red wine bottle, a green glass cup, a yellow fruit ball, a blue spotted table cloth and a slightly lit white lamp, which I tried to give a reflective surface.

Overall I have found both these projects very interesting and quite challenging especially with the skeleton building and rigging of a 3D character. I am hoping that with a little more experimenting with these tools that I’ll be able to animate characters more professionally for future projects.

SWOT analysis

• Trying to remember how build up a 3D model with the dot icons.
• Remembering how to use the extrude tool properly.
• Learning how to cover up gaps with the merging tool.
• Remembering how to place a joint skeleton in the model and how to animate it.
• Character board was easily finalised.