Fantastic Fredrick Walking (and creepy face)

This is my characters walk cycle and some of the expressions he can do. This is the first bit of my animation. I'll post up the evaluation I wrote for this project.

The process of creating this animation went very smoothly. The animation includes expression and a walk cycle. The idea is to show the characters personality and who he is through this. I think I achieved showing that my character is a wizard that likes beer. This is showed as the character walks hastily and smiles and it turns out it’s a massive beer he has been walking so purposefully towards.

Taking my research into account, I should have spent more time on texturing the model. Maybe looking into other techniques to do this. This is something I could work on in my next project. The characters in the animations I researched where often an extension of their surroundings. I think that with a stage for your character you can get a lot more personality across to the viewer.

As I worked through there were some obvious changes in my character design. This was due to personal and peer taste being talked over during the entire modelling process. This actually works like an extended group crit. I think a more in depth group crit would be very helpful to do at the beginning of the modelling process as this will give a direction rather than little additions being implemented and changed as I went.

The presentation was a bit like this as it brought up some issues with how my character was going to work and also some issues with the proportions. All of this was taken into consideration and the proportions where fixed.

If I was to do this again I would look at the types of shaders I could have done some test renders with. This would have added some stylisation to the  animation. The reason I would do this is because the research showed animations using different shaders to make their models look 2D or like a cartoon. This is what was done in the code hunters short.

Overall I am pleased with the outcome. I have achieved all my goals learning modelling and rigging techniques as well as morph tags and some new rendering and editing skills. An issue I have with my animation would be the camera shot. I tried to make it look like someone was walking next to my character filming by moving the camera around but this didn’t works as hoped. Also when the camera turns to his face view the key frames are very close and it looks like a jump shot rather than a swooping motion I wanted.