"It's ALIVE !"

Just before christmas I finished the rig for my character. I wanted the rig to give the character restrictions which would reflect on the characters performance as a robo-prisoner. The image below shows the characters skeleton.

Apart from some minor mishaps (Detailed in my previous post) the rigging/skinning process went smoothly. Alan assisted me on inserting an extra spine joint, he explained that without it the character would look as if it was breaking which isn't exactly desirable. 

With the rig made I decided to give C-13 a test and rendered out a picture of him. See below.

Creating a 3D Character...The Remake

Whilst rigging my character I came across some problems with my model that caused a few issues when rigging/weighting. Because of this, I have decided to give my character an update, as seen below.

The changes made were to the arms and the body/torso, not too drastic, but they have made the character less clunky and a bit more refined and sleek which will help with the rigging and skinning.

Building Zone 3000

As well as working on the rig for C-13, I have also been experimenting with lighting and texturing on one of the first shots in the animation. Below is a composite of Maya renders and photoshop editing which I put together as a reference for what I am hoping to achieve.

Using this as reference I moved into After Effects to give myself a better sense of how to go about editing the final animation. Below is the result which I'm very happy with, although, there are some things that I feel I will alter slightly in the final edit.

Creating a 3D Character

Last week (Monday) I started modelling my character, the above image is the fully modelled character. After I modelled C-13 I moved on to the sets which I am still currently sorting out and looking at ways that I can light them dynamically and look pleasing to the eye. Below is a selection of render passes. (Wireframe, Ambient Occlusion and a Beauty pass)

After my character was modelled and textured, I wanted to have a glimpse at how the eyes would work. The 2D designs proved that the eyes were expressive, but I wanted to see if this also translated into 3D. This was done without a rig, I simply rooted the eyelid shape into the position I wanted. Below is the result. Expression (Left) Neutral Position (Right)