Rhia Crouch's Blog

I've been improving parts of my animation to iron out any of the parts that I wasn't able to do while animating the first around. It's only small tweaks but it will make the difference in the all run.

Sun now has his new face textures so that it fits his colour pattern alot better. Now that I can look at the character with this new face set it does feel that it is sitting alot better on the face now. New Sun Face Textures 1 New Sun Face Textures 2 New Sun Face Textures 3 New Sun Face Textures 4 New Sun Face Textures 5

It has taken me awhile to fixing up Moon's face textures as I have been busy with other things, having a small technical problem along with getting sick and not being able to get to the computer. But I have finally finished her new textures and I have to say that they are adding a new level to her design. New Face 1 New Face 2 New Face 3 New Face 4 New Face 5 New Face 6

After having some time to step away from my work I can now see some of the parts that I need to work on to complete my animation. One of the starting points is reworking the characters' faces so at they fit more with the characters' overall design. This would mean changing the whole shape of the eye along with using a different set of colours and textures to make them sit better on the face. When I get a better idea of the colours that I am going to be using I can start to work on the overall eye shape. Note: Both of the number 1s in the image below are the original designs that I have been working with. Moon face colour tests Sun face colour tests

This last project has pushed me to the edge of what I can do along with encouraged me to think more and more about my work. It has also challenged me to change my mind set with my work, going from panicking and hated it to challenging it every day and finding something new about it. I’ve also learnt to open-up more about what I do and to become more accepting of the feedback I am given and to push forward with it. The place that I felt I was the strongest in was thinking up the designs for my characters. Going over each part of them and improving their designs with the feedback that I was given really helped me to create much stronger designs than the one that I was working with over a year ago. I was able to step back and let the skills that I had in one area help decide the elements that was needed for the characters. I was also able to keep them in an art style that I was comfortable using and it became very up lifting to see them come to life in a 3D space. Animating them was s...

Major Project - Post Viz from Rhia Crouch on Vimeo .

The completed textured models of Sun and Moon. This time their textures have the final designs and effects on them along with a closer look at the characters' crowns.

The stage now has it's updated textures as well. It did have to edit the Earth in the middle so that land on it looked more realistic. The fully textured stage Earth Texture Stage ring one Stage ring two Stage ring three Stage ring four

Sun now has the wooden effect on his textures. This one was alot more difficult to do because of the patterns on the body and arms. I also changed some of the base designs alittle as their were not matching up or there was a detail that still needed to be added. Sun Render 1 Sun Render 2 Sun Render 3 Sun Render 4

I've completed the animation that I plan to use for my final animation. I know that some parts need to be edited abit, such as updating textures, moving the characters about and stoping them clipping in to themselves, but I'm just happy that I was able to completed the whole poem.

I had to do some tests to see if the way that I had planned for the stars to appear would work for my animation. I had planned for them to appear on the background texture, with the textures fading into one another, but as I was using a domelight this seemed to be impossible to do. So I chose a plan that I knew I could do and would be some what easy to set up. I modeled some stars and placed them around the scene. After this I changed the transparency so that it looked like they were magiclly fading in. I also added a small animation to the stars so that they did just sit there. Star Animation Test Video from Rhia Crouch on Vimeo .

When I was texturing the stars I decided that their should mimic the same colours that are used on the Sun character such as reds, oranges and yellows. I am thinking that I should make a third star that is smaller than the yellow one but I'll see how they look in the scene first. Large Star and Small Star Textured

I have now gotten to another part in my animation where I've had to create another prop for the scene to help me move on to the next part. The scene in question is when the stars start to appear in the sky after the crown breaks, I wasn't too sure how I was going to do this so decided to try somethings out. I was thinking that I could easily change the texture of the skydome light so that it would look like the stars where fading in to view but after looking around the settings I found this would be too difficult to do, so I decided that I would use stars that I've modeled in Maya and find a way of changing the visibility of them to make them fade in. I did have to keep in mind that the stars had to be simple shapes so that they fitted in to my work, so I picked a simple 4 pointed star shape as I felt that this would match up with the pieces seen when the crown breaks. Large Star And Small Star UVed

In one part of my animation the Sun's crown shatters in to a number of pieces after being thrown by the Moon. I wasn't too sure how I was going to do this in Maya but I learned that I could create the effect that I wanted in After Effects, so I decided to try it out and do a test. After Effects Shattering Test from Rhia Crouch on Vimeo .

I've been updating Moon's textures so that she look like she is made out of wood. It was a challenge to find ways of making the markings line up with eachother but I found making some parts fainter than others does make hiding the eachs alot easier. I didn't put the wood effect on to her head texture as I felt that they would have been distracting and would have meant that I would have to redo the eyes again. To make sure that this does stand out too much the lines on the neck are alot fainter than the rest of the model. Moon Render 1 Moon Render 2 Moon Render 3 Moon Render 4 Moon Texture Map 1 Moon Texture Map 2 Moon Texture Map 3 Moon Texture Map 4 Moon Texture Map 5 Moon Texture Map 6 Moon Texture Map 7 Moon Texture Map 8 Moon Texture Map 9

As I've been doing the object exchange tutorial to help me move Sun's crown off of his head so that it looks like Moon is holding it, I came across a problem. When the Crown Locator has to swap from the World control to the Moon control that I've set up, it will suddenly jump to a different location in the scene even though it is one frame apart. I don't know if I have to use a different value to make it stay with the hand as Moon moves round or that I'm going to have to animation that shot by hand like I've done with everything else. Animation Blooper from Rhia Crouch on Vimeo .