At the start of this project we we're tasked with creating character designs for a game concept (part of another brief) which will later bring into flash and later Maya. Though this project we will learn a variety of different software, but before all that we had to create three character designs for the animation.
At the start of this project, I started off my doing some quick sketches of some random character designs using typical stereotypes. During this part of the project I personally feel I could've done a lot better, such as coming up with a few different designs of characters past the sketchy stage or simple things such as doing some action poses for them for some different designs. This was one area where i feel that I could've done a lot better if I had better managed my time as near the end of brainstorming characters I rushed on deciding on an idea for the last character.
After deciding the basic character design we needed to further expand upon their designs, because one of my characters was a knight, i decided to look into the crusades for the designs of things such as shields and insignias. Although one part that I feel I could've done better at this point was that i limited my research to only the crusades and did not even look at any other periods where knights were prominent. Another fault i had at this stage of the project was that looking back on it that i seemed to have neglected the research on the other characters as opposed to the designs for the knight, I could've heavily expanded upon them by doing various research into the different factions that opposed them i.e Saracens or the Byzantine which could provided a range of different designs which I could've taken inspiration from. This is one area I would defiantly need to improve on in future projects.
The next part we moved onto was creating four animation cycles in flash for these characters: walking, running, Idle and jumping. I felt this part of the project was the easiest for me although a bit time consuming due to having to draw each and every frame out by hand. Even though i felt it was the easiest there are still some parts of it when looking back that I feel could have improvements, such as the improving the quality of the drawings as they remained quite sketchy. Overall i felt this was the easiest part of the 2d side of this project.
When We finished all the 2d animation of our characters it was time to move onto the 3d aspects of the project. We were tasked to re-create one of our models in 3d so what we could rig and create a walk cycle with it. This part of the project was fairly easy and we didn't really hit any problems with it, but one point was that the topology on my model wasn't too great. This would've meant that animated would've proved to be difficult due to polys' not deforming correctly, to rectify this I would've need to gather some information on this subject and possible watch some tutorials on topology. This is something I defiantly need to look into as the 3d aspect of things is more important when moving onto the second year of my course.
For the next part of the project we pulled names out of a hat to determine three groups of three to collaboratively work on the project. Due to working in a group we had to determine who's model to use. This was a fairly simple task as within our group it was fairly easy to decide as we unanimously decided on which model to use. The rest of this task proved to fairly easy as we had many notes to rely upon to create the walk cycle and to render it.
Overall I feel that there were many aspects of this project where improvements can be made such as the research and design phase, to improve for next time I feel I need to improve my designing and research process which will help improve other aspects further on in a project. Another part that I need to improve would be the topology of my models which can be done through practice and research of industry standard model.
At the start of this project, I started off my doing some quick sketches of some random character designs using typical stereotypes. During this part of the project I personally feel I could've done a lot better, such as coming up with a few different designs of characters past the sketchy stage or simple things such as doing some action poses for them for some different designs. This was one area where i feel that I could've done a lot better if I had better managed my time as near the end of brainstorming characters I rushed on deciding on an idea for the last character.
After deciding the basic character design we needed to further expand upon their designs, because one of my characters was a knight, i decided to look into the crusades for the designs of things such as shields and insignias. Although one part that I feel I could've done better at this point was that i limited my research to only the crusades and did not even look at any other periods where knights were prominent. Another fault i had at this stage of the project was that looking back on it that i seemed to have neglected the research on the other characters as opposed to the designs for the knight, I could've heavily expanded upon them by doing various research into the different factions that opposed them i.e Saracens or the Byzantine which could provided a range of different designs which I could've taken inspiration from. This is one area I would defiantly need to improve on in future projects.
The next part we moved onto was creating four animation cycles in flash for these characters: walking, running, Idle and jumping. I felt this part of the project was the easiest for me although a bit time consuming due to having to draw each and every frame out by hand. Even though i felt it was the easiest there are still some parts of it when looking back that I feel could have improvements, such as the improving the quality of the drawings as they remained quite sketchy. Overall i felt this was the easiest part of the 2d side of this project.
When We finished all the 2d animation of our characters it was time to move onto the 3d aspects of the project. We were tasked to re-create one of our models in 3d so what we could rig and create a walk cycle with it. This part of the project was fairly easy and we didn't really hit any problems with it, but one point was that the topology on my model wasn't too great. This would've meant that animated would've proved to be difficult due to polys' not deforming correctly, to rectify this I would've need to gather some information on this subject and possible watch some tutorials on topology. This is something I defiantly need to look into as the 3d aspect of things is more important when moving onto the second year of my course.
For the next part of the project we pulled names out of a hat to determine three groups of three to collaboratively work on the project. Due to working in a group we had to determine who's model to use. This was a fairly simple task as within our group it was fairly easy to decide as we unanimously decided on which model to use. The rest of this task proved to fairly easy as we had many notes to rely upon to create the walk cycle and to render it.
Overall I feel that there were many aspects of this project where improvements can be made such as the research and design phase, to improve for next time I feel I need to improve my designing and research process which will help improve other aspects further on in a project. Another part that I need to improve would be the topology of my models which can be done through practice and research of industry standard model.