Midterm Blog Post: Self-Evaluation

Through the first half of this semester, I've learned a great deal about motion in characters, forces, and structure within said characters themselves. From hand drawings to 3D modeling, I really enjoyed every part of this half and am a little excited for the next half.

One thing I am especially proud of is my drawing skill, and how much they've improved since the beginning of last semester's class. Back then I was just getting the hang of drawing characters in poses, but now I've grown to have them exclusively in motion.

The thing with animal characters is how much their anatomy is different than normal human characters. The shape of the eyes, as well as the size of the pupils, really gave character to my frog character. The expressions on him were something I particularly liked, and he seemed very easy to draw as well.

I have also created a character with two big feathery wings and a serpentine body in place of legs. At first it was very difficult to draw because the placement of the feathers bugged me, but after trial and error I now know what I'm doing enough to clearly show the "fingers" from the rest of the wings.

My third character is one without a body or limbs, and all of his emotions are expressed through his eyes or a disembodied hand on occasion. At first he only had one expression because his pupil is the same color as his body, but by sliding the pupil's position around I found he can show more than one expression. The subtly of his expressions is one of the character's strong points.

All these characters have come along so well in my opinion, and I look forward to drawing them more in the future, for leisure or otherwise. For my final however, I will take my first original character, Domino, and make a walk or run cycle for him in Maya. Since I spent so much time on these newer characters, he deserves some quality time. I want him to be the most polished off the group, especially for future projects.

Using the Force

Using a new 3D model, I decided to mess around with forces and gravity on a figure. It took a little longer than I imagined, because the keyframes wouldn't stay where I wanted and ended up glitching out throughout my work time.

The best thing was playing with the model. Though the silly dimensions were cool, I wanted to really experiment with the humanoid figure for my character. The exaggerated motions went with my more cartoony characters than more serious ones, and the character had his arms and legs flailing about as the platform moved beneath him.