CD Artwork

FInal Crit- Grumpy Moose and Lucy

The Making of Lucy by Emily Clarkson

Onto Texturing!

Needed a break from the skinning process. I have yet to sort out the skirt, but also the bunches. bt I feel I may need back up in order to figure out how to achieve this. In the meantime however, seeing as Lucy is UV mapped, I jumped straight in and Textured her.

Adding just the freckles,  made Lucy look a little pasty so I decided to tint her cheeks slightly and give her a little more colour despite the fact she's supposed to be a cartoon character.

 

So finally after working my way down the body. I got to the eyes and I decided not to UV map the eyes. And that shaders were better. However the only issue highlighted is that those eyes are not quite centred...

 However I'm chuffed with how the eyelids look having changed a few of the faces.

Now for the rigging. I'm hoping I'll be able to fix the eyes here… and also get those joints done for the skirt and bunches. In any case. She's well on her way.

Skeletons and Skin's

Skeleton

So a bit of progress has been made. Lucy was given a basic skeleton complete with a 'ribbon spine'. Ideal for a cartoon character for the squash and stretch features it possesses. Its a fairly quick process, the long bit is the next bit. The skinning- attaching the skeleton to the model and ensuring movements between joints are corrected.

                             The ribbon spine completed            Addition of legs, hips and pelvis

                  Addition of the arms shoulders and hands              Finally the head

Lucy's complete skeleton!

Skinning

Below are playblasts of skinning tests as I was adjusting the weights between joints. These corrections help make the characters movement more natural when the joints are later manipulated during animation.

Below is a sample of the arm movements. Testing the wrist, elbow, shoulder and clavicle.

This bit is of the most fiddly and long winded section of the character. The hands and fingers

Now for the main body. Movement shown in the chest, spine joints and also the pelvis

Next comes the motion in the legs. Testing the motion of the hips and knees. 

Finally comes the motion in the feet and ankles. These ones bothered me most in that the ankle pointing down looks too soft. The thing is, there is only one ring of vertices assigned to the ankle joint itself.

The only bits left to do are to add joints to the bunches in Lucy's hair so they can react when she moves and the same with her skirt. I'm still not entirely clear on how to achieve this but I'm sure I will work it out shortly!

Lucy's getting the UV treatment...

I have just spent the last two days plastering Lucy with the brightly coloured UV maps. And after some interesting and frustrating sessions of unfolding items like hair and socks she's finally completed.

Finishing Lucy

Here are the final stages of creating our character. Theres a lot here because its an amalgamation of several sessions of modelling!

I wound up creating legs that went up to the waist ready for connecting to the waistband of the skirt for later rigging.

Then came the shoes. They were quite sweet if a little blocky.

 

 Unfortunately creating the arms I forgot to record my progress but they didn't take that long to model despite missing an orthographic angle. I managed to guestimate using the tutorials

 Creating the hands were slightly long winded what with the example being followed only being four fingered while Lucy was designed to be five fingered. 

 It was about here I suddenly remembered her hands were the wrong way up and did go back and turn them 180 to make sure she didn't look broken.

Finishing off the head here. Had to recreate the eyes, make the hair and eyebrows.

 The hair was completely ad hoc. I had to guestimate a lot!

 The body and head were connected

 And finally we have Lucy!