Group work 3, James's job finished

These colors all came out looking really nice, I think I prefere the ones were his face is darker, But im still unsure about which one to choose, I think right now im torn between 3 and 4, but I think 5 would look good if it had 4's face shading. Very nice work by james and I got the work back to me in a good time frame.

work i produced while ill

The last few posts have been things ive done before I got flu, so things ive been trying to get done is the camera angles, As Paul said it will be an important part in what im going to do with my background, he said the dome shape would not work as it would distort the image plane to much, so he suggested that I have a single plane like in my original idea, just bend it slightly in a curve. But ive got a few pics of the new set idea that will be posted soon, and im working on the camera angles.

Group work 3, James to colour concepts

I showed paul my monkey colors, and he said that the problem with gold/yellow, is that it can make the character seem a bit sickly and ill, So we were talking a bout it back and forth and we decided that James will go away with my colours, and come up with a few different variations on my chosen colors, and see were we go from there. It will be the colours ive chosen, its just the tones that were trying to nail down right now.so James said he'd get them back for me and then once thats settled I can get to making the monkey in maya.

Rough colour concepts

These are some images of my monkeys color scheme and my background colors, Id like to have the colours quite bold, not ultra realistic but not to simple either. With the character and set being quite styalised i think realistic textures would contrast to much with the artwork. i also do not want to toon shade it, so simple texture designs are what I will be eventually looking for.

more images of designing the character

I was trying to figure out how long the monkeys tounge will be and roughing out a design for the 3d model.

background dome

The next problem that I became aware of at the pitch was my background. If I wanted to show any other camera angle apart from straight on,you would loose sight of the background. so to tackle this I made another one in maya, just to see what it would look like if it were in a sphere.The only problem with this is that it will distort the image plane to much so I will have to keep searching for another method of creating the background/

clay monkey

Another aspect Paul suggested I do before making my monkey in maya was to have a go at modelling him in clay first,because I told Paul I sometimes find it hard to translate things from 2d to 3d, and he said that by doing this it will help with that, so I made a clay version of my monkey. I didnt use a wire frame, I just made it from air drying clay, it took me about 4 days to make.

nazcar monkey

This is what Gary suggested I look at, The peru monkey. This is what I based my final design on.

random poses and workings out

here are some poses now I have the design,and things like me doing guidelines to draw my own character. Also a very rough colour scheme, this is just a quick rough colour variation sample.

work i did before my illness

After the pitch a few issues were raised with the design of the monkey, with both Sean and Gary saying I could push the design further. The next day I went about correcting this, Gary spoke to me and said my monkeys style reminded him of the nazcar lines in peru, which is good because I wanted the style to be like the mayan temple monkeys, I looked at the images Gary showed me and I noticed the trunk of the monkey was longer. so thats what I started to work on the next day when I came to adjust the style of my character.

it was going to keep the same style, but change in proportions.but what i soon found out is that with the stomach getting longer it was throwing everything else out. so i spoke to paul about it and he helped me loads! we went back to the original spider monkey photos and broke down the body structure, paul said that when stylising an animal that already excisits, its best to play on the features the animal has,and spider monkeys hav elong arms and legs, and quite tiny chests.

so with pauls help we were able to find the right balance of proportions while keeping with my style,but also staying mor etrue to the spider monkey!

because the problem i was having was that the legs were to stumpy,but with the long torso, it just didnt look right, so here are the final development stages of my character.

paul also suggested that i soften the face of the monkey and not make it so ridgid, and the exageratte the eyes more , becasu eteh spider monkeys look quite childlike and dainty, and the eyes of teh oruginal design were quite sharp, and as paul said, the more sharp you make the eyes the more angry its going to look, and thats not what i wanted.

pitch day

I gave my pitch today and explained what id been up to since the begining of the project, I think it went quite well, there wasnt any problems raised work wise, athough there was suggestions made that I could perhaps push my monkey character that little bit further style wise, aswell as the tree, which I think could be a good idea, although I do like what ive got, but I want the monkey to be interesting for the audiance.

I dont want to simplify the design to much because I dont want to loose that style which ive got, so even if its a little bit more work modeling then ill experiment with varuious styles, but im going to get lots more drawings done of the final design and see what I can create, and also figure out the mechanics of how the monkeys hands and feet are going to look, as this was something that was found to be lacking at the pitch.

Gary also suggested looking at the Nazcar desert monkeys that the mayans had drawn into the sand, as it already looked so similer to my design anyway , but just for ideas on how I could possibly push my design further, He also suggested looking at bonzai trees to add a bit more contrast with the brazil nut tree, these are the thing swhich i will be working on over this weekend , im also going to be modelling a clay version of my monkey to help me translate it into 3d.

Group work project 2, Research work for Sue

sue was telling me how she was having trouble finding research images of a childrens hospital ward for her enviroment project.

Because my mums a nurse I said I may be able to ask her if it would be ok if I could go in and take some photos of her ward, so last week mum asked her ward manager if it would be ok to take some photos.

and i went down on friday afternoon and took pictures of the ward and the hospital equiptment for her.

rough color variations for monkey

Over the weekend after id gotten all the concepts out the way I had a go at playing with color, I want the background colors to be quite pastel and earthy, making the monkey the brightest thing in the film, the red versions of monkey I dont like, because red is an angry color and this monkey isnt an evil one, its just a mischevious one, ive also been looking at lots of pictures of spider monkeys, and there various colors, and one that seems to stand out more and has had more of a possitive response, is the golden/orange tone with the black tuffts of hair on the tail and elbows. I also like this color as it wont clash with the background and its still in keeping with the mayan style I wanted to get, with all the gold tones they used to have in there jewlery and pottery,the last image in the color tests is what my monkeys color will be.

Laura to do my end credits (2nd person on film)

I spoke with Laura and she told me that she would like to specialise in doing the end credits for movies, so because I was originally going to fade out my animation, I thought it would be a nice idea if I gave laura the job of doing something with my end credits, Kyle also gave me the idea of having my monkey doing certain cycles in the bottom part of the screen, which I liked and will be doing, so other then that Laura can have free reign on what she'd like to create.

expressions of monkey

Once id decided on the final version for the monkey character i did a few pictures of his expressions and then I did a turn around and i had a go at doing a turn around to see what the rigging would look like.