Chelsea Butler

It took a little longer than I would have liked, but I have now almost completed the rigging of my models. I plan to rig the hair of Linette and the Ghost, and rig the tie for René. I have also completed the eyebrow and mouth blend shapes for each model and included controls for ease of access.  

I have now managed to complete most of the skinning for my three characters. This took a while to do as there were some complications in terms of my geometry. The collar of René's shirt was a bit of a challenge as I needed to weight some of it to the neck joints, and I have yet to figure out how to skin his tie. It may involve needing to add some joints as I plan to have it move during my animation.     As for Linette, her torso was the most challenging as there are many separate pieces of geometry that make up the top of her dress. I also plan to use NCloth to give her sleeves and skirt the look of flowy fabric.   Finally, for my ghost character, the most complicated part was trying the skin the shoulder area. She initially had a bardot neckline on her dress, however, because the collar was sitting in an awkward position, skinning became a struggle and in the end I resolved this by altering the geometry of the torso. As a result, I also needed the cut the head in a different posit

We began taking animation classes with a professional games animator, James, last week. This week, we were tasked with creating some quick 3D poses using the Bony rig and some reference images provided. The rig was easy to use and the exercise was a lot of fun to do. Here are the poses that I created during the class:

It took me a lot longer than I anticipated, but I updated my story for my animation. Its very rough and unrefined, and after finishing it I realise that I could've added in more details and panels to deepen the story (perhaps showing the ghost realising that she really is a ghost and is "no longer of this world"). I also realise that I need to practise drawing different camera angles and perspective, so I plan on reasearching into that a bit more at a later date. I may update this storyboard as I progress with rigging my characters and create the environments, but I think this gets the main point of the story across.

I have now organised the UVs for all three of my characters now. I had a little difficulty when it came to the hair of my characters because they are individual tube shapes, but I managed to lay them out and fit them into the grid, despite it being tightly packed.  

 The Minor project has been quite a journey for me in terms of professional growth. Due to the unforseen circumstances of current world events, things took a turn for all us, and we delved into the world of working from home. I feel quite fortunate that I have access to a working computer at home, even if the internet can be a bit tempermental.  When it comes to the work for my project, I feel that the premise of my story was relatively good; the idea of a romance involving a ghost and a human seemed quite exciting and I wanted to work with that. Utilising this concept did prove a little challenging though. It wasn't so much  that I couldn't come up with a story for this concept, but rather I had several ideas that didn't quite hit the mark for me, and so this has lead me to fall behind a little, as I now need to redraft my storyboard to fit the new idea. I have been struggling to come up with something engaging and entertaining, and am still learning about camera shots to

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