Category: Animation

Clare has started to model the different parts of the castle and together we have assembled it. We might fill it out a little more but since it is going to be in the distance with some clouds partially covering it, not too much would need to be done…if any more at all. As long as we get the sense of there being a castle/kingdom in the distance.

After receiving some feedback on the palace we were advised to re-shape the overall palace so I am going to go back and re-work and model extra parts to make the overall look more aesthetically pleasing. Below shows the progress of the new and hopefully improved model, along with some research into middle eastern palaces which helped with building shapes etc…

Taj Mahal

This palace is a good example for the kind of look we were hoping to go for.

Although our palace won’t be a main feature in the animation, it will be there in the background to help tell the story and also to aid with our visuals.

Abu Dhabi

This building is another which has greatly helped in the design of our palace. The overall placement of shapes and domes helped in creating better shapes overall.

Below is a screenshot of the new top of the palace I am working on, I am still keeping it low-poly.

Updated progress of the palace shown below;

Along with working on the palace we have to work on the arrangement of the cloud formations and the mountain top where the dragon will be perched. Getting the environment to look as if it is filled with clouds is turning out to be quite difficult. As the overall look is low poly, the clouds look more like rocks when I put them all together and seem to be quite distracting. (Screenshot below).

When thinking about this now I might try to bring other elements into the equation to help with the aesthetics. Maybe we could work on having Pegasus have a bit of solid ground to walk on such as a bridge or path that is supported by really long stilts which disappear into the atmosphere below. Just food for thought. I might start some pen and ink drawings to help with visualisation of the idea.

I came across this amazing piece of art but I can’t find the name of the artist who created it. I love how the palace is sitting on the mountain with it’s structures winding down around it. It looks so nice! I am definitely going to take some inspiration from this. I have exported a beveled cube from Maya and plan on taking it into zbrush to sculpt it to give it a bit of shape/variation. I will post the progress in a slideshow below. Having the palace sit on something solid might work better than having it completely surrounded by clouds.

I have been working on the overall look of the palace for a few hors and here is my progress thus far.

Overall I like it so far, it is definitely better than what we had before. The direction is completely different with it having rocks and foliage but I’m sure they can be worked in successfully as long as we keep it looking consistent.

I have added in some background detail. Keeping it simple with some mountain/hills etc…

Update

At the moment we are at the stage of adding in clouds using fluid effects. I thought it might be a good idea to give them a go since the low poly clouds just don’t look right. Maybe we could have a few floating in the background. Below are some progress renders for testing the clouds.

References 

Palace image – https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/302937512427795576/?autologin=true

Taj Mahal – http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2017/11/notes-related-middle-east-broader-islamic-world.html

Abu Dhabi – http://www.hoteliermiddleeast.com/22564-world-islamic-travel-summit-to-be-held-in-auh/

 

Below are just some animation videos I have posted here for future reference when trying to texture and light. Some inspiration for the low poly 3D look in general.

 

We are going to base the design of the dragon around one of Clare’s concept designs. (Seen Below) The dragon has some cool looking crystals coming from it’s back to add extra personality and interest. We will be adding wings also and looking into some creatures which are similar in structure to help us when designing the base mesh.

Clare done some research and came across the Komodo dragon which is a large species of lizard found in the Indonesian islands. this dragon might be quite good reference when designing the shape of the dragons face, along with the limbs and tail etc…

As you can see from its face it does look like a typical dragon you would see in a movie although a little smoother in general. Great reference for the design of the head. The images below are also good reference.

Terryl Whitlatch

Terryl Whitlatch is an amazing creature artist who specialises in designing fantastic creature design. She has superb knowledge of animal anatomy and this results in designs which look anatomically correct. I have watched a lot of her videos in the past and read through a few of her articles in various magazines. Whitlatch has produced some dragon-like creatures seen below, some reference can be taken from these designs. It’s amazing the amount of inspiration she gets from studying zoological references.

I love this colour scheme used above, it is quite similar to that of a Monster that is in my favourite old PS1 game called Wildarms..(see below) Maybe Clare and I could use similar colours to these for our dragon design.

Wildarms – Play Station one – back in the day 😉

 

References

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/surprising-facts-about-komodo-dragons

http://www.clear-creative.co.uk/print/advertising/

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/g/green-iguana/

Inc., I. (2017). Creatures of Amalthea Landing Page. [online] Imagination International Inc. Available at: https://imaginationinternationalinc.com/creatures-of-amalthea/ [Accessed 30 Nov. 2017].

Before starting any modelling, Clare and I have been drawing a lot of quick dragon sketches to get some different shapes and designs down.

Clare and I started to model the basic mesh of the dragon in zbrush. I thought that spheres would be a good option to quickly build him up. Below are a few screenshots of the progress so far. This is about one and a half hours work so far. I think it looks good so far, although we might refine the shapes a bit more once we agree on a style.

 

I decided to add in a simple wing structure so that it will be ready to be brought into Maya for some sculpting and changing about.

I had a few problems when using the adaptive skin option in Zbrush but after a while I figured out that there was a problem with my spheres, I had a hidden sphere which was causing a lot of distortion in the model, once I removed this and repositioned some others everything was good to be moved into Maya. I also used the decimate tool to lower the poly count to see how the model would look. I exported three variations and imported them for a test render in Maya.

Wireframe render

Generic render with AiStandard Jade material

Ambient Occlusion render

Colour paint over

Above is a quick paint over of the ambient occlusion render to test out some colours. Overall I don’t like the higher poly on the left but I do like the lowest poly mesh on the right….maybe we could use this one for the animation? It’s more of what I had in mind for the style.

The slideshow below shows some quick renders with the wings. After doing these renders I have decided that the wings are just too plain and I might work on them a bit more.

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Rigging the dragons wings… just started to attempt to put a simple rig in the dragons wings. I am going to base the skeletal structure off that of a bat’s wing as I feel this would make the best reference for the style of the dragon’s wing.

References

Galileoramos.com. (2017). Eidolon helvum Skeleton « Galileo Ramos – Art with Skeletons. [online] Available at: http://galileoramos.com/esqueletos/gallery-of-skeletons-mammals/eidolon-helvum-skeleton/ [Accessed 4 Dec. 2017].

 

So Clare and I have been working away on our designs for both Pegasus and the Dragon. We have also been thinking about colour schemes along with the look and feel of the environment. Here are a few quick sketches of Pegasus. I have an idea for how he should look, basically a normal horse but I was hoping for electric blue hair….hopefully. 😀

 

 

 

 

Today I am focusing on getting the shape of the horses head correct. I will be working on this between Maya and Zbrush. I bought a few of Aaron Blaise’s courses a few weeks back when they were on sale and his course entitled ‘How to Draw Horses” was one of them. This is thankfully coming in handy today when thinking about designing Pegasus’ look.

I have done some drawings of the horses skeletal head and musculature etc. These features are important to keep in mind when sculpting.

Below show the beginning of the head modelling. At this point I am still a little unsure as to what type of look he will have, I am thinking more simple so that I can spend more time perfecting the animation. Another thing I am unsure about is whether to have realistic eyes or simple eyes. Maybe I could animate it’s brow to help with facial expression?

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