25/11/20
[Figure 31]
In The Polar Express, the team's original idea for the motion capture of the movie, was essentially painting over the actor's original skin tone with the artistic style of the books. Very heavy shading, painted look, bright white eyes, realistic looking strands of hair and flat texture almost everywhere else. I figured because my practical response was basically creating a creature over my own Maya head - I would do my designs for the creature in this method.
Doing this, I can see why this would be hard for the production team, as all the paint strokes are unique and would morph differently across the frames. I also think the piercing white eyes would have been haunting and almost "alien" in the dark background of the movie.
Rare Finds. (2015) 'Rare Finds: Well, Are You Coming? 30 years Of The Polar Express' Biblio Blog, November 20. Available at: https://www.biblio.com/blog/2015/11/5427/# (Accessed: 27 November 2020).
[Figure 33]
For my own creature, I decided to follow the Hulk's form of morphism as I plan to talk about his progression a lot. With the Hulk, his face gets wider and his jaw becomes more sturdy - and his eyes almost stay the same - keeping the same proportions but scaling to fit the face. After stretching my head, I drew out the shapes my face made and tried understanding what I could morph in to.
[Figure 34]
I found that the pointed eye sockets reminded me of a reptile and how narrow at the snout. I also have a friend with a bearded dragon, and so I thought this would be a fun opportunity to use them as reference. The spikes mean that I can try out using my technique for making grass in my Maya mountain test over the summer, using the pull tool and harshly turning up the strength of the "sculpt" on small polygons.
[Figure 35]
Holt, K. (2019) [Instagram] 23, December. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/harry.lizard/v (Accessed on: 27th November 2020)
As i looked in to a lot of realism at the start of my project by basing the human head off of a real person, me. I decided that I should similarly use a real life reference. But I also wanted to use what I had learnt from the Hulk movies, which is that the animated and smooth version was better accepted than the overly realistic attempt in 2008. So I chose the bearded dragon, as a dragon is the closest to a myth I would find. I also have a personal connection to the dragon, as he is my friends - making us share a link, like Hulk and Banner. This let me use more animated style mouths whilst making us look similar by our proportions and polygon placements.
Other designs
[Figure 37]
GOOD - Fits the face shape well, Avatar inspired nose and ears
BAD - Fur is difficult, especially if I have time to animate facial expressions.
[Figure 38]
GOOD - Good for animating, interesting exaggerations, face shapes are recognisable.
BAD - Way too simple. Hardly any deviance from the human face, which defeats the point of the practical.
26/11/20
On Day 4, I turned on the computer and found that I had lost seven hours worth of work, which set me back to a few minutes after Day 2. I found out that the student version of Maya saves, and deletes any existing saves before that one. If there is an error at any point, Maya fails to process the latest saves and deletes any before it too. So all of my backups had the same issue.
After finding this out, I spent day 4 redoing what I'd lost. The good thing about this was that I realised how important shapes and curves are in making a head - making sure the lines follow each other around the face. I also had redone the ears a bit different and I think they look more like mine and less like the one in the tutorial. I had a bit of trouble with the back of the head possibly looking too square shaped - but after designing a little bit, I know this will work in my favour for the future parts.
[Figure 39]
[Figure 40]
[Figure 41]
[Figure 42]
[Figure 43]
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