Character Design Workshop #09

In our last character workshop, we took a brief look into environments and how their similarly reflect and share the same principles as a character design. The Lord of the Rings becomes a great example of this, with the dwarven culture and architecture running through their designs; from the strong square columns and grand architecture, to the functional and robust weapons and armour of the character of Gimli with his helm and axe. Notice that the intricate inscriptions are also consistent in both character and environment to further establish a coherent world between the two.



With this in mind, we were given a random environment to design with a specific flavour. The theme I was given was a tricky one, a Primitive Starship. The main idea I had in mind was to avoid elegant shapes by using square and irregular forms.



Justin further suggested adapting a pre-existing form of technology to imply the primitive nature of the starship, such as modern day shuttles requiring huge rocket engines to launch into space. This is something I will definitely keep in mind when faced with future design challenges.

Maya Character Workshop #03 - Rig

With the UVs laid out, we now move on to establishing the rig for the character. Hopefully, I have positioned the joints accurately enough.

Maya Character Workshop #03 - UV Layout

Here we have laid out the UVs for the character ready for texturing. Learning new techniques such as unwrapping and relaxing UVs will prove invaluable in future.








Body and Head UV map.

Car Modelling - Mustang 07

Back to modelling the car - we're almost there! Here we refined the rear of the car while defining the bumpers.

Character Design Workshop #08

A slightly different setup in this weeks character design workshop, in small groups, we were to act as a studio and develop character designs for a client's proposed animated TV show, Jetpack Jones. Together, we had to produce 6 final characters designs in 2 hours, fitting the required elements of the brief and synopsis of the show. My group was formed by Ruben, Godwin and myself, where the three of us decided to work on 2 characters each whilst providing regular feedback to each others' designs to ensure they would fit together in the same world.

The two characters I focused on were:

Boltz - A Medical droid who has developed personality quirks from several datacore meltdowns. A later client change included an extra mechanical arm (which unfortunately did not get time to add). Final design is the smaller design on the right.


Ariana - A beautiful, mysterious, secretive, deadly and seductive woman who is secretly working with the villain Dr. Zantius Kromozone. A later client change included an aquatic, underwater background. Final design is also the furthest on the right.


You can find a better look on the other characters; tomboy mechanic Tessa Brainstorm and hulking genetic dinosaur henchman Grok over at Ruben's blog, as well as the hero Jetpack Jones and villain Dr. Zantius Kromozone at Godwin's blog (soon to come).

With all our characters designed, we drew up each side by side for a scale comparison.

Left to right: Boltz, Tessa, Jones, Dr Kromozone, Ariana and Gork who would be the largest (not pictured here).

Finally, we had to pitch our designs to our client (Justin Wyatt), where we received some positive feedback along with some suggested tweaks to the designs that perhaps a client would find necessary.

In all, it was fun change to the usual character design workshops, requiring us to work as a group quickly and efficiently to form character designs with a client/studio scenario, where I can give my thumbs up to Ruben and Godwin for a job well done.

Them! (1954)

Science fiction film, Them! (1954), was one of the first 'nuclear' monster movies featuring giant irradiated ants where it was also nominated for an Oscar in Special Effects.



The plot involves man's encounter with gigantic man-eating ants, having been mutated from the radiation of early atomic tests. As two winged ant Queens escape, it becomes a race against time to save mankind's place in the world, by finding and destroying the ants with their colonies before they can reproduce on a global scale.



The pacing of the film was surprisingly refreshing as the mystery begins right away with a mysterious lone wandering girl in a desert, with the investigation of peculiar 'crime' scenes. Even when the ants are finally revealed and our heroes destroy the nest, we soon find that it is only the beginning of the things to come in a desperate search to find the other remaining ants. Even the authorities and military convincingly appear to be doing their job rather than aimlessly running around in great displays as in previous films such as Invasion from Mars (1953).



From the wide array of environments, the film is certainly atmospheric with the harsh sandstorms of the desert to dense underground catacombs of the ant's nest. It soon becomes evident that the production values and special effects were impressive for the time period, with the huge lumbering ants being unforgettable with their slow deliberate movements and ominous clicking sounds of their mandibles, as well as plenty of ants even being set on fire.




Perhaps what makes Them! most intriguing is in the credibility of its fiction, as a world where atomic radiation has blighted the landscape and mutated its inhabitants doesn't seem too far off, particularly in the wake of the Atomic bomb and the constant fear of nuclear annihilation. Additionally, the dangers of the gigantic ants seem plausible when given scientific understanding of the common ant, in that they breed at an alarmingly rate, while possessing the physical strength to lift 20 times their own body weight and the mental capacity to unite and work together as colonies [1]. Scale the size of the ant up and one can truly start to see the terrifying potential of gigantic ants if such a thing would ever to occur.



Overall, Them! is thoroughly enjoyable and engaging as a sci-fi shocker, being described as an essential classic of Cold War radiation scare films to being by far the best of the '50s cycle of creature features' when compared to similar releases such as The Quatermass Xperiment (1955). It undoubtedly held much influence over the genre with the ant's nest being reminiscent to Alien (1979) with the hive queen mentality and nest, as well as games such as Fallout 3 (2008) with a particular quest titled 'Those!' involving giant mutated ants, albeit, fire-breathing giant ants.

Character Design Workshop #07

We looked into Creatures and Monsters in this workshop, seeing how old and contemporary examples of imaginary creatures draw their influences from real animals. Greek mythological creatures such as the Centaur combine man and horse together, fantasy dragons draw influence from lizards and bat wings, to contemporary examples such as Avatar with three legged horse/zebra mammals.



As such, we had a go designing our own creatures based on a habitat. The theme in my designs was Forest, where I designed a feral hedgehog/rodent, an crocodile/iguana, a rather comical owl with a huge mouth to devour its victims, a beaver with deer antlers and a horned bear type creature.



I'm not sure if I quite got the right idea, but it was a fun exercise to do.

Maya Character Workshop #02

Finally combining the body and head together, these tutorials on character modelling have been really insightful. I now have the confidence to be able to use these skills when developing my own character model. Next, I believe we'll move on to rigging the model.

Maya Character Workshop #02 - Head

Continuing to model the head of the cartoon character. This workshop has been great in understanding the process of modelling a head, from general topology of the muscles to the individual facial features.