A Gnome and his Minion

#1

HI everybody,
Here are two characters I did as a personal project - model(Lightwave) - setup//animation(Messiah).
As I’m writing, I’ve just finish the setup and did a lot of stress test. Of course, I intend to animate them, since I’m mainly an animator.
It’s a Gnome and his Minion (a Voidwalker), inspired from a game “World of Warcraft” (Blizzard entertainment©), where I had to start from scratch (images from the Internet mostly).
The idea behind this is to create an acting scene.

     [img]http://www.psykoter.com/4CG/gnome_small.jpg[/img]
     
     
     You will find 3 links:
     
     --the image below in a bigger size:
     [http://www.psykoter.com/4CG/gnome_big.jpg](http://www.psykoter.com/4CG/gnome_big.jpg)
     
     [b]- 1 -SMALL VIDEO[/b]: a turn around those two characters in pose, so you see them from all the angles:
     [VIMEO]77398892[/VIMEO]
     [b]
     - 2 -SMALL VIDEO[/b]: while I put the Gnome in pose, I show how the rig work (in a simple way for this example):

//youtu.be/GCbpwzAamrI

     Hope you enjoy ;)
#2

I check out your links and I actually think the characters are pretty interesting. However, I think some of their coolness is being lost to the poor lighting. I might help show off the pieces better if you take a few min to refine the lighting a bit.

#3

Thank you for your time Thrivingartist,
About the lightning, there is almost no lighting, since it’s the "“view screen” in open GL from the software at the moment.
I’m an animator first who “can model and rig”, but I must admit that lightening is my weakest point. Still, once the animation will be done and added to my demoreel, I’ll work for sure on a shaded//lighting scene just for my pleasure.
But for the moment, I prefer when I send my demoreel to be judge on the animation, rather then been shoot down because of a weak lightning :wink:
But be sure that I will post some WIP of lighting scene to have some comments to help me get it better (since I already got the background and 80% of the character textured).

#4

Whether or not you are going to be judged on the lighting. If you cant see the animation good or there are a lot of dark spots on the characters because of lighting then this becomes an issue. If you want the best possible result and look for your animations you need to take lighting into consideration even if you aren’t being judged on it. I’m not saying you should spend 6 hours on the lighting just make it easy on the eyes and not a pain for someone at a company to look at, because if it becomes hard to see for them they will immediately click away don’t make them work for it to look at your stuff.

Jacob Sutton

Check out my blog!
http://suttonjacob93.wordpress.com/

#5

As JacobSutton points out, it is all about showcasing your work. As they say you can’t redo a first impression. If their first look at your portfolio is a poorly lit seemingly low quality shot. That is what they will walk away with, even if you feel the animation is amazing. The idea is to have a reel polished enough to where they will actually watch the animation and not get sidetracked by poor quality in other areas. Remember it is all about standing out. If you were an employer and you had two reels in front of you and both were animated just as well but one artist had taken the time to polish it a bit more. Who would you chose?

#6

Those are 2 characters I’m still working on.
But for the occasion, the gnome changed is outfit colors, and they just wanted to wish you:
Happy Christmas & New Year :wink:

 [img]http://www.psykoter.com/4CG/Card_small.jpg[/img]
   [b][full scale](http://www.psykoter.com/4CG/Card.jpg)[/b]
    [img]http://pheno.cgsociety.org/portfolio/project-detail/1144041null[/img]
#7

Thanks. Happy Holidays as well. :beer:

#8

Hello all
Here is how I managed to create the smoke that is going to surround the void walker.
I didn’t want to go into “real smoke” FX, things that are to complicate for me, and to long for rendering especially.
So I decided to go for a trick I saw during production I worked on :stuck_out_tongue:

       [b]-1-[/b] First a create a polygon with an animation mapped on it (color + alpha), that was a
       sample in an other software. Than I make sure it loops.
      
      This how it looks:
      
      [img]http://www.psykoter.com/4CG/smoke.jpg[/img]
      [img]http://www.psykoter.com/4CG/smoke2.jpg[/img]
      
      
      [b]-2-[/b] from that, I parent the poly to a null and animate this null, and make the animation loops.
      Since one isn't going to be enough, I duplicate this polygon (64 time) and create a sort of rail of null. I duplicate and rotate each""rail"" a little bit so they're all around the character. So now the Void-walker looks to be surround.
      
      Finally, since it's a simple polygon, I make sure using the"COMMAND tab" that each polygon always face the camera when this last one is turning//moving around, to create the illusion that the smoke is in 3D.
      And this is what it looks like ;)
      
      The final cheating effect, ([i]cartonny in a way[/i])
 
      [b]void - Smoke test - 1  [/b](HD disposable in full screen)
      [

//youtu.be/d9cYmB7rcqo
](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9cYmB7rcqo=fr_FR&fs=1&rel=0)

#9

The particles look pretty cool but it’s pretty obvious that it’s the same texture on each sprite. Is there a way to add a random offset for the start frame of each particle to add some randomness? Otherwise you might want to add some more sprite textures.

#10

I’m agree with you Snipes-nl.
I’m going to work on that to add more diversity (by random offset). I was so focus on the rig that I haven’t done enough render to realize :wink:

#11

I don’t know what you plan on doing with the character animation wise, but it would look a lot better if the character bobs up and down and around a little bit to simulate him floating, cause right now he’s just hanging there without any motion, but I bet you already have something planned.

#12

This was just a rendering “smoke test” with no motion on the character. Don’t worry, he won’t be that stiff :wink:

#13

Having worked on the texture (probably going over for some details) and calculating a turnaround at the moment, here is one image of the gnome to give a preview.
Don’t pay attention to the belt in itself, the light isn’t at the right place to show the texture, something that will be fix later on.

[img]http://www.psykoter.com/4CG/gnome.jpg[/img]
#14

Hello every one,
I’ve been a bit away from my computer since I moved from one town to an other because of a new work.
Nevertheless, I let my computer calculate when I was away before moving.
I used Lightwave for the rendering.
Here is a turnaround of the gnome only. I took time to care for the light//shading and the texture (even if it isn’t really my domain).
Still, I see some details that need a little bit of more attention, especially the dress in the texture.

[VIMEO]91489039[/VIMEO]

So CC are very welcome.

After that I’ll do an animation test, and then animate both of them (the gnome and the Voidwalker).

#15

Gnome is not dead !! :wink:

I’ve been very busy this last months, and I couldn’t work on my spare time and post something new about my character.
So here are a “”“beauty render”"", the gnome and his so called minion (voidwalker).
And now that the rig is completely finish (after several revision), I made some pose test, and some basic animation to make sure everything work fine.
So the next step is to animate the character for good.
Here are pictures of that " in play-blast "

PS: hope you will see in the last picture by which actor the gnome is going to be influenced by in his acting ^^

#16

What about a last bottle of rum to end the day :wink:

#17

For the animation I’m going to do, I asked a much better animator than I am to lead me
Here is two animatic (simple drawing to have a sense of timing and poses at first) that I’ve done, but have been rejected (not enough potential to do in animation because of the soundtrack, to make it short)
Still, I was thinking that it might be nice to show the WIP (which is far from being a straight line :)…)

  It might be that I found an interesting soundtrack. Wait and see.
  
  [b]__PROPOSITION 01__[/b]
  [VIMEO]112857706[/VIMEO]
  
  
  [b]__PROPOSITION 02__[/b]
  [VIMEO]112855599[/VIMEO]
#18

Hi all,

I take the opportunity to ““summon”” you a merry Christmas :wink:


image HD : BIG

Wish you all the best.

#19

wow(no pun intended) this is looking great! tons of work on this! instantly recognized the WoW style on it.

#20

Nice! The voidwalker was always my favourite minion. :wink:
I enjoyed your rig demonstration. Seems like you have put in a lot of functions and the skinning looks very smooth. I noticed when you moved the spaulder, the ear sortof collided with it. How did you achieve this effect?
I also like the poses you made. Very expressive, nice face shapes too.
Hope to see some animation soon! :stuck_out_tongue: