Character project I'm working on

So to keep myself busy while job hunting, I built a simple character.

It took a few steps to get there, obviously, so where to start. I wanted to replicate the artist Christopher Zito's style of the kobold creature, so I did a style study to get a feel of how things should move and expressions I should try and hit.

Then I went about doing a character turnaround to try and keep some consistent form, as well as understand what things should look like.

From there it's down to some modeling,

A bit of ZBrush work,

A splash(whole heap) of rigging,

plus a lot of pose testing,

and we get the video at the top. I'm still doing a few tests here and there, but mostly as I go. For now, have this blocking test I'm slowly working on.

Bringing to light some things in the dark

A bit annoyed that I hadn't posted this here, but now is as good a time as any to post this. I was fortunate enough to work on this project, updating the various character rigs and a few props with new deformers and added control systems. It feels like the light at the end of the tunnel is starting to appear and gain in intensity. Soon we'll all get to see the wondrous horrors that this film contains.

La Noria Teaser from Carlos Baena on Vimeo.


La Noria Teaser from Carlos Baena on Vimeo.

While the main campaign is over, you cans still grab some of the rewards, which are pretty cool.

La Noria Indiegogo Page.

Thats all for now.

Cheers!

Test animation pieces

So while I await some reviews on other projects, I decided to do some animation work using my golem rig.

First is just a walk cycle to get a feel of how it would move. I focused on the major movements first, and will be moving to the secondary movements, like the stones shifting and the tree swaying, next.

The second one is just a more character driven sort of animation, with a medium close shot. This is only a portion of the dialogue, and I'm going to pull the camera back a bit more to better fit the golem into frame. I'm only using viewport 2.0 for now to get an idea of how it might look. I may do a full render later to show off the glow of the eyes and the horn.

Video drop

So I've realized that I don't have many of my rig videos archived here. I'm going to remedy this now.

First is the newest beast, the golem.

Second is an old cloth sim test I did for the golem

Last is a new facial rig I built

Small update like stuff

I figured I'd give some updates over here regarding a few of the projects I'm working on. The main one last session was Curpigeon, which for my part, was wrapped up as of Friday last week. I've learned a bit about rigging birds as a result of it, so I get to come away with that. I'm not sure when I'll be allowed to show the setup, so that'll stay in hiding for the time being. If you want to keep up on the progress, go to curpigeon.com and peruse that place few news and such.

Meanwhile, I've done some work regarding the Golem project. I've gotten the body built up to a good place and I'm just about ready to start binding and rigging the beast. Here are some production bits:

Skull piece after being finalized

 

 Rough Body placement

More construction and a test pose, plus some color coordinating

Current standing

 This thing has been crazy to work on, and is only getting crazier as I work out how to do certain things, such as my proposed loose fit stones and the vine growth setup, plus the body construction setup I want to implement, as well as an anchor point for the rig. This doesn't include potential texture work, lighting, animation, and rendering. Still so much to do, but it will be one heck of a piece if I can do this right.

Sci Fi ship update

So I managed to get some more things working on the funky ufo, with the main thing being the leg extending from the bowls of the ship.




still much to work out though.

[Edit]

New controls set up.

Another project I did for a friend

Something I decided to do on a whim. My friend showed me a model he was working on, and I offered to rig it up for him. Being a hexapod, I figured it would be something a bit different, and how right I was.

TMR Update

Well, I couldn't help myself. I decided to just rebuild the rig it had. Not entirely from scratch, as the joints I left from the first rig were still useful. A lot of the old controls will probably be broken though, since the deformers they used to control aren't there anymore. It's looking good so far though, now that there are a few more extra movement directions for the clamps, and the hierarchy chain doesn't look like a tornado struck. I did leave the aperture in the eye alone though, since it would take way to many joints in that small region to recreate what was already there. Kind of a nice break from the Prowler. I'll either work on that or switch over to the lightsaber again next week.