Transcription: I present to you "Megan's Alien" !

And after 10 weeks of hard work it is finally done. I am pleased with it but it could have been better in terms of animation. I hope you enjoy it :)

My incomplete turnaround will be edited after the crit.


The Art of Megans Alien

Technical Paper- Megan's Alien

CD Design

DVD Case Design

Transcription: Megan's Alien- Coming soon!

With all things going to plan I hope this turns out well. Hope I don't disappoint :P

Transcription: Alien's 3D Progress

With the hand drawn animation of the alien progressing I couldn't help not to work on his 3D model, too. Now that I see him alive ( even if he is just skinned) I am tempted to work on him more with a very basic rig on his eyes, body and a few blendshapes. 

His animation will be fairly simple with him entering the screen waving 'Goo Goo Ga!" like Megan mentioned. Of course this will be during the credits, as the main animation of Megan is completed.

 The Alien's basic rig.

Transcription: Some final Render Stills

Here are some stills of my animation which I'll be working on during the Easter holidays. I actually had to render out the whole animation twice as the projected texture on her hat stayed in place, and made it really painful to watch.

Transcription: Lighting Set-Up

So today me and Alan tried to work out the N-Cloth for Megan's outfit but it completely went wrong. The N-Cloth on her sleeves was penetrating the one on her body which made it very difficult to handle. So instead I will have to skin it, meaning that it stopped me from rendering today.

Another thing we finally worked out was the lighting which now looks more like the sort of lighting you find in a studio with multiple shadows casting on the floor. 

I am hoping to get my rendering done before I fly back home, as I won't have any facilities there to do it. Next step is to do the hand draw part which I am looking forward to :) 

Transcription: Texture and render tests

I played around with some textures on Megan's face today by adding a bit of blushing and freckles on her cheeks. She instantly looked less like a doll. I also quickly made the armchair with some bright colours to suit the mood of the animation. I am hoping to start animating the alien soon as Megan's animation is nearly complete and will soon be rendered. 

Transcription: Animating WIP (Intro scene)

First day of animating today and it already looks like it's going to be a long but rewarding process. My first attempt was not successful but I used my keyframes properly on the second and it looks  a lot better. It still needs a lot of work but I guess it is a good start. So a few pin points Alan gave me in terms of animating characters are:

-Always use key frames. It will make your animation more precise and easier to work on.

- Start from the root of the action (which is the torso in this case) and work outwards moving to the limbs.

- Choose a direction to work on. For instance work from the top of the body and move downwards.

- Use 'opposites' to make the animation more fluid. For example, when working on keyframes, try and move the spine the opposite direction.

Transcription: Some Branding Ideas

Since I cannot work on Megan at the moment because of some technical errors I thought I should do a bit of Branding. 

I was trying to think of a logo that would definitely say 'childhood' as this is what the animation will be focusing on: a child'd hyperactive imagination. I immediately thought of fridge magnets, school sketchbooks and colourful text as a sort of typography. I will defiantly work on this more, but this is what I can think of now.

Fridge magnets

Kids' writing book

Colouring Book

Transcription: Animation Timeline

Alan's advice today was to separate my animation into chunks, meaning pieces that would correspond to Megan's each mood and speed in talking. With Alex's video and by listening to the recording carefully I now have a sort of a timeline to guide me so I can control Megan's movements better. I also added where all the possible pauses will be so I can give time to Megan to 'think' about her next line. Also, a sort of 'stethograph line' to show Megan's energy levels while she talks. 

Transcription: Alex's Performance as Megan

One thing that I thought it would be hard to do is to animate Megan without any reference. So I tried performing her myself but I was two stiff, so I asked Alex and Kay to act it out instead. Alex was the best out of the three as she was gestural and full of energy. Thanks for your help, Alex! It will be an enormous help when I start animating.

Transcription: Dilemma- 2D or 3D Alien?

After talking to my peers I realised how much I wanted to see Megan's Alien in 3D and still get to show it in the final animation. Of course I want to maintain the 2D part because it adds charm to it and it definitely looks like a child's depiction this way. Or I could have both: the child depicting the alien in a 2D way and the  3D Alien coming to life afterwards. 

I decided to test it out, so I modelled him using basic shapes. I really don't know if I should go for it or not. It will mean more work for me but it will certainly enhance my skills in animation if I do include him.

Transcription: Lip Syncing Progress

So I've spent all day today lip-syncing. The main animation is down but there is still a lot more to do like the eyebrow rig. At the moment she looks a bit robotic due to the static head but once I start animating the whole body it should look better.

Part 1-Intro

Part 2-Middle (Alien Description)

Part 3 (Ending)

Transcription: Megan is Alive! (First animation test)

After all the modelling, skinning and rigging, she is finally ready to come to life. Next step is lip syncing.

Megan Waving

The rig set up on her tassle was quite tricky to do but it finally worked after the second try. I had a few problems with double grouping going on which Alan helped me solve.

Tassle rig setup

And she is finally waving and smiling.



Transcription: Megan's Blendshapes and Full Body Rig

I spent quite a lot of time on these and tried not to make them look like they've been through really bad plastic surgery. I have completed all the phonemes and visemes which means I can now move on to the eyebrow rig.

 And she's fully rigged, ready to go :D

Transcription: Megan's Skinning Progress

As I mentioned, I skinned the inside body in preparation of the N-Cloth. I came a cross a few problems but I think I have a good base for my rig. On to rigging then.

Head/Mouth Skinning

Full Body Skinning

Transcription: Megan's Rendering Set Up

With Alan's help today we managed to bring Megan to life and make her look more 'healthy' in a way. I was fortunate enough to get some good advice on shaders, lighting and render set ups when it comes to making the character look organic.

I also got hold of a very nice velvet shader for the hat found in Creative Crash.com which means I wont have to use fur which takes more rendering time.

This is the shading network I used for her which consists of a smpler info node, a mib_ambient occlusion material from the mental ray shaders and a ramp of her skin tone and specular colour.

Transcription: Megan's Modelling Complete

All the basic modelling is done with only a few tweaks left to be done on her. Next step is to UV Map her and experiment with some clothing textures and shaders to make her look less doll-like.

I have also modelled her actual body in preparation for the collision used for the N-Cloth.

Full-body Model

The Face

Hand and Wellingtons' details

Wireframe

Layers of geometry preparing for the N-Cloth

Transcription: More Facial Experiments (with actual improvement)

I've been really frustrated to get her face look right so I added more baby features to her which made her look ridiculously young. After speking to Alan he suggested to bring all her features back to avoid making her face look flat. Now her face looks rounder and definately less freaky than it was before.

Transcription: Megan's Face Tests

i've been experimenting with these all day now. I think the last one works best with the button nose and wide face. I need your opinions plese :)

Transcription: Megan's Body and Head Modelling Process

The body wasn't hard to do. I just had to keep the geometry simple to make the N-Cloth work better when I add it on later.

 The only thing that concerns me is the face. I changed it to bring it closer to realism, like bringing her eyes closer together, and as a result, she became more generic and lost her charm. I am going to post up different versios of her and see what works best for her face.