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.