Doctor Mortimer Huffenagle Test!

Hey guys,

My work on my side project continues and, as promised, I continued my character test of Dr. Huffenagle.  I know, there's nothing ground breaking in this test, but I wanted to have one more go at lip syncing and animating.

Also, as with the other test videos, the voice you hear in this clip isn't the voice you'll hear in the movie.  I just needed a sound file to do the lip sync.  If you recognized the sound clip used to test Jimmy then you'll have no trouble recognizing this sound clip as it came from the same movie.

 And, since my last test video had a background I felt I had to do the same with this test.  

The keying of the good doctor against the background isn't the best, but I don't think I'll be keying in the movie short, so just ignore the faint green outline around the character and don't worry about the fact he's rough around the edges.

And now I need to regroup and figure out what to do next.

I'll certainly let you know.

Later!

Character Test 3!

Hey guys,

I've spent the last couple of days working on the third and final character for the side project I'm working on.  His name is Dr. Huffenagle and he is the villian of the movie.

The reason it has taken a couple of days is because the first day I spent cleaning up the model, fixing they eyebrows (like I had to do with Jimmy and Nathan) as well as figuring out a way to make his trench coat work.

Besides the fact trench coats are cool, I wanted him to wear a coat because Thomas/T-Boom wears shorts that are constructed the same way as Dr. Huffenagles jacket and I was having trouble getting the shorts to move with the characters legs.

Well, it turns out the fix for the jacket (and by default T-Boom's shorts) was staring me right in the face.  I won't go into boring details but trust me, it was a simple fix.

Back to Dr. Huffenagle.  Once I got his trench coat figured out the problem became how to make it blow in the wind (very important for Power Dog's cape) as well as how flexible do I make it?

The flexibility comes from the material modifier I use.  The first one I decided to try was cotton.  I  know, an odd choice for a trench coat, but I wanted something that would really blow in the wind.

So, here is a test video with a cotton modifier...

As you can see, this clearly looks like a cotton trench coat and although it blows very easily in the wind it looks really light weight and more like a robe than a jacket.

So, I decided to try a leather modifier.  The problem with that was that the jacket hardly moved in the wind.  It turns out I really had to try several different setting with the leather modifier until I finally found one I like. 

Here's a test for the final settings I chose...

I know, that is very subtle movement.  The truth is, I really had to lighten the leather's mass and stiffness as well as seriously kick up the wind to get it to blow that much.  The truth is, leather jackets really don't have that much give and by default don't really blow around in the wind.  I found that anything more than what is seen in the test video just didn't look like leather.  So, these are the setting I plan on using in the scene.

Now that I got that out of the way, I will probably do one final character test with the doctor.  I won't be breaking any new ground, but it will give me one more opportunity to practice my lip sync technique before I move on to my next problem.

I'll share that next problem with you after this last character test.  Today is Thanksgiving (Happy Thanksgiving by the way), so I have no idea when that final test will be completed.

Check back in a week...

Another Character Test!

Hey guys,

So, when I last left you, I had done a little test video for a character named Jimmy, who is going to be in a little side project video meant to give me some practice animating less complicated characters than Xam and Power Dog in an attempt to help me learn animation.

I'm still at it, and I've been working on a test for a character for this side project.  His name is Nathan and he is a ghost.  The test is another 10 second video that allows me to practice giving Nathan movement and lip syncing his dialogue.

I know, didn't I already practice that with the last test?  Yes, but Nathan, being a ghost, gave me an opportunity to test how I was going to make him look ghostly (or transparent) and therefore makes this a good test.

So, here is the Nathan test video.  Like the Jimmy test, this test is not Nathan's voice.  I needed a sound clip to set up the lip syncing and, once again, this comes from a pretty famous source.  Funnily enough, I've used this source (kinda) once before.  A while back I was testing my animation and I created a TARDIS (see Doctor Who for more information on a TARDIS) and now I'm using the Doctor himself.  We'll, the 10th Doctor, and this is a line from my absolute favorite episode, Blink.

Check it out...

So, pretty fun I think, and next I will do a character test for the third and final character, and old, crotchety fellow named Dr. Huffenagle.  He wears a trench coat and that is why I want to test him.

Stay tuned...
 

Updated, Updated Jimmy Test...

Hey guys,

Long time no talk! 

Sorry it's been a while since my last update. Of course, if you've been following the blog for a while then you know that October is an extremely busy time for my family.  And, just in case you don't know about my other blog, feel free to head on over to Hollinger Hollow and check out what takes up most of my time during Halloween!

But, as you no doubt are aware, we're halfway through November now and that means it's time to start focusing on my main passion, Xam and Power Dog.

So, when I last left off, I had told you about my plan to work on a small scene with different characters in an attempt to get better at animating.  The reason for the different characters is I wanted to try my hand at animating less complicated characters than the ones I designed for Xam and Power Dog.

Well, I was able to do a test video with a character named Jimmy to include some movement of the character but mainly to focus on lip syncing.

The first video (which is in a post below) looked pretty good to me, until I posted the video and on playback realized his eyebrows moved across his forehead when he turned his head.  The reason this was happening was because I made his eyebrows out of a separate mesh that I just "placed" on his forehead without rigging them or attaching them.

To fix this, I simply deleted the separate mesh eyebrows and colored parts of the mesh over Jimmy's eyes brown, made another video, posted that one as an update and called it a day.

Wouldn't you know, although it stopped the eyebrows from floating across Jimmy's head the truth is I hated the look.  It was flat and sharp at the edges and just didn't look very good.  I tried telling myself that the point to this was to make the characters simple and it simply couldn't get any more simple than that.

Still, I hated the look, and in my "spare" time this last month I would check back on the video to see if maybe it started looking better to me and at the end of the day, no, it didn't look any better.

Sometimes I am amazed at what a small break can do to restore your creativity.  I say this because when I opened the file today to work on Jimmy I decided I couldn't stand the flat, square eyebrows and immediately set about to fix it.  Well, that took me all but 5 minutes.  Seriously!  The fix was staring at me in the face and the only thing I can figure is that I was so burned out I didn't see it.

So, without further ado, here is the update to the updated video I last posted.  For those that don't remember, or who don't care to scroll down a little and refresh their memory, this is Jimmy borrowing a line from a very famous movie in order for me to test my ability to make him talk.  Enjoy...

And there you.  I swear, this will be the last update to this particular test video.  I am finally, honestly, 100% completely happy with this test. 

So now what?  Well, I really am not sure.

As soon as I figure that out, I will let you know!

Later!