Stood Up : .

The Making Of

The brief for this project was to make a model from an illustration of a children’s book character. This model would then be rigged, weightpainted, and textured. The final outcome was to be a short animation in which the character got ‘stood up’, for a date, or meeting or such.I picked Professor DuPont from Quentin Blake’s book ‘Cockatoos’.

Before I started on my model I wanted to get a good feel for the professor, his appearance, and his proportions. I studied the illustrations in the book and made some of my own sketches.

Storyboard:

The idea was that he would be waiting in an art gallery. Through several sets of textures for the background I would have a clock show it getting later and later.Eventually he would leave. We would next see him in a pub, sitting dejectedly at the bar. After a pause, he would get up very calmly, pick up his bar stool, and whack someone around the head, thereby starting a fight. I thought he could pick a fight with three big muscular marines; their juxtaposed physiques may prove humorous.

The scene would be cut as soon as the fight started. Then we would be outside the pub. A few seconds later DuPont would stumble out triumphant, and stride off with his flowers over his shoulder.Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I was unable to animate the interior pub scene, despite having modelled and textured it all.

Texturing of the gallery:

I thought it would be a nice touch to have the cockatoos in the first shot,

and for them to slowly disappear over time. Each scene was shot separately, to be edited together after, with fades

to black inbetween. This would effectively illustrate the time passing.

Models for pub scene:

Some inspiration & reference:

Textures for pub models

table

barstool

chair

The chair, table, and bar had Blinn materials to give the appearance of

varnished wood.

Model of muscular guy:

Reference:

I’m pleased with this model in general, as it is only for a background character. His torso is the most correct part, and

his legs and head are right in side view. However, his head and neck are rather

off, and although his general appearance is acceptable, it is not what I was aiming for. I’m not happy with his

texture, either.

Pub exterior:

The model of the roses was pretty simple, but I enhanced it by using a bump map to make the flower heads stand out, and a transparency map

for the cellophane wrapping.

Bump map

Transparencymap

I was very pleased with that model, especially in profile. It actually turned out better than the model of DuPont.

His texture:

I wanted to keep some of the

sketchy roughness of

Blake’s original illustrations, and am pleased that I achieved this to a

degree.

A few rendered frames from the beginning scenes:

The scene is understandable, but does not look as nice as I pictured – this is due to my texturing and lighting/rendering abilities. It has elements of what I wanted, though, and still works as a scene.

I am not pleased with this project. I think my ideas may have been a little too ambitious for the time constraints, and it shows in the

quality of the final piece.Rendering I am still finding incredibly difficult to understand and do. My modelling has improved greatly, but my texturing abilities not so

much.I do not feel I have achieved my goal with this project, as I don’t even

have a finished piece. I am pleased with my models, however, and think I had a solid and entertaining narrative.