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.