Rhia Crouch's Blog

One of the things that I felt was holding me back when coming up with my characters was the throught of how I was going to model then in Maya, I feared that after a point I want not be able to handle the modeling and start to get things very wrong. However, after talking with my tutors about this come up with the idea for me to have a 'Lego Kit' of some kind that would be easy for me to work with. What this kit would be I have to work out for my self but if I give myself a starting point and see where it will lead me. When I first thought of the idea of the kit I thought about the way that I would build the characters if I was limited to a small set of shapes, how would I used them to make an overal object? This lead me to making quick models of Sun and Moon to see what shapes I would need for their different parts, it also helped me look at the baseic form of them in 3D and work out somethings that I hadn't noticed untill then. Moon Shape Base Test M...

Over the summer I tryed to think of way that I could improve my characters and maybe push some of features to make them look more mystical, such as the tails, as well as trying out a different design or two. Unfortunately the scanner that I used didn't seen to produce that a great an image and even after editing them in Photoshop the best I could they still don't look like the best quality. I might at a later date go over the body drawings in Photoshot to work out the different design ideas for the characters' outfits when that art style is a bit more set in, as I feel that they are 95% what the overal look of them will be. Sun body test Sun hair hair Moon body test Moon hair tests

Squash and Stretch in Maya from Rhia Crouch on Vimeo .

This is the per-viz for my Minor project that I have been working on over the summer. I set about doing this to get a better idea of now some of the shots would play out and to test out now some of the pops be shown. I am happy with some of the shot, such as the way that the Sun and Moon are introduceed, close ups that I have used for both characters, the way that Moon swings round with the crown along with the way the image fades out on the Sun at the end. I'm not too happy with some of the shots that have the characters moving around but this might be because I was focused on the walk cycle and I might not need it in my finished animation. I also think that the shot of the sun and moon spining round might have been done abit better.

Pose 1 To get better at posing in Maya we have been set to do 5 minute poses of a random action using Moom. I chose to do a fencing pose but just as the time was up I was making one last tweck to the hips and Moom glitched. Reference Image

For my third year I have been thinking a lot about where I need to go with my work and how I’m going to do it, however, this has caused me to have a bit of a knock in confidence and made me fearful of the end result. Looking back, I think that one reason way I might have gotten like this because I was over loaded with ideas or that I gotten worried about my skill set becoming a problem when I try to bring it in to Maya. I’ve never really been too confident about my work and as I was working on something that was my own idea I think I might have panicked and got too stuck on trying to get everything right. My plan is to carry on with my premise project and take it on in to my Minor. My hope is to set in stone the art style and to research the over all feel and look of my characters. The best way of not making this seem like a task, and to make this more fun for me, is to play around with texture simples in Maya. This might include making little tests similar to glaze tests...