with another class complete and an approval done, we have a basic direction as to where we are headed with our project. we decided to make a short film about flower people, with a female trying to reach the male, we are still aiming for good visuals compared to most animation films we found as reference (or benchmark so to speak) so we ARE aiming for an animated short. keeping that in mind, I've been checking out a ton of videos on how to properly rig a character, with good deformations and creases. as i don't want our characters to look like they have a beginner stage rig. i ended up finding some really good resources like an animator on twitter called Kiel Figgins https://twitter.com/KielFiggins he has some impressive rigging jobs on his page and posts the occasional tutorial here and there, i found one with a breakdown of how he does most of his rigs https://vimeo.com/388830109 he adds a lot of extra joints to help the mesh deform more naturally, he also provided a breakdown of what he does in the description, so i have this link saved until i need to start the rigging process.
considering we are also doing an animated short, i looked up some good videos on how to maintain a good animation model for a short film, and also came across some gems, this one for instance is by an artist called Dikko on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01WQlMD7dsk&t=1014s he explains some fundamental steps to keep in mind when creating an animated character, he covers some good points such as the size or scale of the models, their poly count, face loop flows and so on, i know we were taught this kind of stuff back in our previous trimesters, but it's good to get some extra insights on this topic from an industry professional, so i will definitely be coming back to this guy's channel. some other things I've been researching is modelling or sculpting a good flower, considering that's our main attraction, i will be looking up some videos on how to make a decent looking flower, but considering we don't how our flower species down yet, i won't be focusing on that this week, however i did find a good video on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd9-2vEJ0xo this guy uses a new modifier in 3Ds Max that i can't say I'm familiar with, but i will surely be checking it out as it makes modelling a flower 10 times easier.
apart from the things i've been researching this week, i also made some concept sketches for the flowers and what i'm aiming for the male flower to look like.
i am aiming for a masculine figure but i love making androgynous characters, so i experimented with those and i'm loving the bottom left design, we still have to get approvals for the story before we begin these concept sketches but i couldn't help myself.
that is all for this week, hopefully we get approved for the story this coming week and we can finally start designing the characters and environment.