Storyboards - 95% Complete, Screenplay - Complete

In these last few weeks I have been working hard on the storyboards for the film, in my recent crit with Hillary, she approved of my near complete boards (only one or two panels are now missing) and so I will post them below;

And here is the link to the SCREENPLAY for the film;

ON THE FENCE SCREENPLAY

3D Research and Development - Bagboy Body Rig

For the character of Bagboy I decided that it would be best to use a pre-made rig, keep things simple.

The biggest reasoning behind this I have is that he is a character who for 99% of the film has a Paperbag over his head, and his stylisation comes from that very Paperbag, not exactly from his body.

So me and Laura decided that the Eleven Rig (http://elevenrig.blogspot.co.uk/), would be the best rig to use for a number of reasons;

1) Ease of Use

2) Childlike anatomy

3) Easy to customise

So without further ado, I began my research and development into this rig and how I would go about changing it.

So after looking at this rig and studying it's controls and familiarising myself with it I began playing around in Maya to find out the easiest way to access his geometry.

I figured out that the best way of doing it would be to duplicate the difficult to access Body_geo and then remove it from the Rig's grouping hierarchy. I then exported it as an obj file then imported that same obj file into my scene.

With some assistance from my tutor, we realised the easiest way to attach new geometry and make it work with the rig would be through a Deformer, the Wrap Deformer in particular.

So on my OBJ imported geometry file, I extracted some faces and created a vest like piece of geometry to attach onto the Eleven Rig.

After aligning it correctly with the rig and resizing it a little I then used the Wrap Deformer to Wrap Deform the Vest Geometry to the Body_Geo.

Result Shown Above: Success.

So I now took it further and decided to give him his shorts, I kept these quite tight and rolled up at the bottom to get away with not having to use nCloth (so the shorts don't look too stationary)

Just adjusting some geometry, then I wrap deform the Shorts to the Body_Geo

And once again...success!

I then gave these pieces of new geometry simple textures, changed the skin texture by adjusting the pre-made texture nodes in the Hypershade and stuck a simple Paper bag over the rigs head, and I'm actually starting to get something which resembles my final character!

3D Research and Development - Bagboy Paperbag Rig

For Bagboy's Paperbag in the film I want his eyes to be quite expressive, which is a difficult task, since his eyes are basically just 2 black holes! However, I had an idea.

I looked at Pocoyo:

and also at Blue Umbrella:

And I loved how they had given these basic characters and basic textures such expressive eyes.

So i set about doing it myself using some rigging knowledge as a test.

It's obvious that they've used 2D Images for the Eye textures so I'll need to use Photoshop with Maya for this task.

In rigging you can use driven keys to connect one attribute to another, and you can also use a "Frame Extension" with an Image Sequence to make one File Node in the Hypershade represent a series of images.

So with this in my head I began to create my test through some trial and error.

I first created a box as my test Paperbag Head and a simple Nurbs Circle to use as a Controller.

On the Nurbs Circle I added an "Enum" (selectable) attribute called Eyes Shape and gave it Enum Values like "Open" "blink" and "Happy.

I export my Box UV's and bring it into Photoshop, after which I create some simple textures on the face I require textures for. Then export these images as separate tif's as if they were an image sequence.

Then I attach a file node of my "base" texture (in my case the Eyes 001 which is the Open Eyes image) to a lamberts colour value.

And use set driven keys to connect the Eyes Shape Attribute...

...to the Frame Extension Value.

And then set a driven key to each attribute for example:

Eyes Shape: Open -> keyed to -> Frame Extension 1

Eyes Shape: Blink -> keyed to -> Frame Extension 2

Eyes Shape: Happy -> keyed to -> Frame Extension 3

And then when I turn on my Image Sequence option on my File Textures attributes I can then...

Animate between textures like stop motion as I want!

FINISHED PLAYBLAST FOR TEST:

Layout Development - Concept Art Paintings

I took inspiration from Leonid Afremov who I looked at and talked about earlier in the blog, and wanted to produce some pieces that really set the mood and could assist Mikey with the Lighting and my Sound Artist for his work on this film.

Shot from down below up to the fence Daytime.

Shot from down below up to the fence Sunset.

One of the final scenes of the film in concept form.

Layout Development - Floor-plan

A few weeks ago I created a basic Floor-plan...

After developing and rethinking my layout I updated the floorplan, made it cleaner and created this:

This Floor-plan will most likely be quite close to the finished Layout.

All Concept Designs Finished

Concept Design - Bagboy's Spindle

I wanted Bagboy's Spindle to be made from interesting shapes, an interesting design if you will. I first researched various different Spindle's.

I then looked at the shapes and forms that was involved in all these different spindles. And began constructing some different shapes and ideas quickly.

I really liked what I got with the long, thin design, as it complimented Bagboy's long slender frame nicely!

Shape grammar, gave me a better idea of each spindle shape and reaffirmed which one really worked!

Side by side comparison of the Bagboy and Spindle Shapes...this is NOT A SIZE COMPARISON!!

Further developing my Spindle Shape.

The finished Spindle Concept Design.