Final thoughts

I have enjoyed myself a lot over the course of this project. I have learnt a lot from taking a character all the way from concept through to animation, Which I am glad i did.
It has helped me understand the process more and made me realise how much work needs to go into fleshing out a character to make them believable.
There were several parts I found more easy to do then others, and the first being to come up with a character in the first place. I enoyed coming up with the story and the background history for my monkey, as this helped me in figuring out his physical apperance.
I enjoyed fleshing him out and coming up with the story boards.

One of the aspects I was worried about when I first decided that I wanted to take on all tasks involving the creation of my character was that I would be doing the modelling of my character in 3d. I had previously modelled my 2nd year set in maya, but I had never modelled anything organic, So this was going to be somewhat of a challange for me, As I am not very confident using maya yet and thought that I may struggle in this area. I found a pre rigged monkey online that I could use if all else failed, which helped to take the pressure of slightly.

But I was given several gnoman dvd tutorials to look at from Simon, and several others given to me from class mates, which helped me greatly. I had kept the design of the monkey purposly simple throughout my design concepts because I knew that I would be the one modelling it. I believe I created an interesting design with style which I was then able to translate onto the 3d model.This is something I feel quite proud of as I was very worried I wouldnt be able to complete it, But I stook with it and I am very happy with the results.

Another major aspect of me creating and modelling my own character in 3d was the rigging. This was something I was absolutly dreading right from day one. And I had to think long and hard before I modelled my character that is this something I wanted to try, Because if not, then I should either give my designs to someone else to model and rig, or just use a pre rigg. Because otherwise if I modelled the character then it didnt get rigged, it would be a waste of my time.

However, saying that I was quite determined (or stubborn) to carry on through the enitire process. As this is the goal I had set myself. So I finally sat down, and tried to get my head around rigging.After two weeks, over 90 saved versions, many panic attacks and sleepless nights later, I had my fully working body and facial rig. It had a few minor kinks that people had to help me iron out, but overall for my first attempt at rigging, I think it could have gone a lot worse.
I believe I am better off for going through the process. A baptism of fire if you will.
And I can honestly say, that it is the single most difficult thing I have had to learn in my whole three years of being on the degree.

I am not the most technically minded person, but I stook it out, and is something I am quite proud off. My knowledge of riggs and models will only get better and I feel more confident now I have taken that first step into understanding the process behind them both. This is an area of my skills that I feel I has definatly grown.

After that I was ready to start animating, I had been doing several test animations throughout my model making, But the whole rigging and modelling process took up quite a bit of time which unfortunatly cut into my animation time, Although this process will be quicker the next time I do it. I filmed myself acting out various movements and could see the benifits straight away in my animations, as I was able to pick out small gestures that would have otherwise been missed. I also looked at lots of footage of monkeys to see how they moved,and drew various storyboards to show my characters actions.

I feel my animations have gotten better since last year, and I feel that with the research I did in the actions, that this also helped me become more confident as it gives me another process in which to organise my planning, rather then doing a bit of planning and going straight into it. I now have video footage of myself acting scenes out, aswell as actual animal footage, and my other research I did previously to help me make the animation as good as I can.
This will be the process I follow for animation projects in the furture.

So overall I feel as though I have gained knowledge in several areas I was unsure of before, and I feel that this has helped inform other areas of my project and helped me create a piece that reflects this gain in confidence and skill.

final film submission

This is my final piece that I handed in to be marked, I decided that I prefered the version that was ambient occluded to the one with textures. Although I will try to render out a color version for the degree show. This is the movie, I havent been able to put the sound to it on blogger although the one being marked does have my music on it. There are a few aspects of the film I would like to change for the show. One of them being the style of font used for the txt, I found a good one called 'Cracked', Which went really well with my film, But unfortuantly my version of after effects didnt have it so I had to use another font. I would also like to retime the last few seconds of my film, As I feel that this goes by a bit to quick, But because of time restraints I had to get the renders started otherwise they wouldnt have been ready in time for hand in.This seems like a small aspect to overlook, but I had to render out using the computers in the studio as well as my laptop (which crashed several times and had to restart the render), So baring that in mind I really didnt have a lot of options as the computers took so long to render out my work. The first time it took over 14 hours, This time however because I handed in my work a week later due to my sick note extension, I had more computers available, but only 4 of them were opening my file, so it still took around 10 hours to render.

Here is a research video I did of myself acting out the scene were the monkey bites the brazil nut.I forgot that the part were the monkey throws the nut had been taken out a while ago, but I accidentally included the slam/throw into this. Also this is were I got the idea to delay the bottom jaw slightly when th emonkey shakes his head to create a drag. As embaressing as it is to film myself I could notice the benifits stright away, As it allowed me to pick up on small gestures that would have otherwise been overlooked.

Jump research

Here are some clips of youtube of monkeys jumping. Again I have included a playblast of my animated jump so you can see how ive implemented it.

quad walk research

Here are some video clips of quad walks I researched which I got of youtube. I have also included a playblast of my animated quad walk so you can see how I have implemented my research into my walk.

original fur texure

I did however have a go at creating a fur texture of a turtorial I found online. The turtorial was originally designed to replicate a cheetas fur, But I alterd it along the way to fit what i wanted. Although because Ive not unwrapped the uv's , I have been unable to use this as when it is applyed it does not have the affect I wanted.

monkey color

Here are some images of my monkey textured, I have just used basic colors for this one, as I have been unable to unwrap the uv's. I am still undecided as to how I am going to render out my film, either with just an ambient occlusion light, which makes my character look like hes made of clay, which I like, or with textures. My problem is that with my not being able to unwrap the uv's the textures I have may look quite flat, so I dont want to do it that way if it throws of the rest of my film.