I was aimed to relaunch a children's TV programme in this project in the style of 'Lost and Found'.
I chose to re-design the character : Paddington Bear.
And the style I chose was the short animation: Lost and Found.
As I really impressed by the hand drawing style in Lost and Found. I tried to apply this style in my environment. After model simple houses in 3ds max, I tried to paint them in Mudbox by using bright colours and using skylight in the scene. I am pretty satisfied with my final result.
Lost and Found pictures
My Environment scene
The sky background was another issue I
faced. Although I know that I can create a sky dome in 3ds max to make the sky,
I worried about the rendering time as it used mental ray renderer. That was why
I tried to render the animation
out in Targa Image file and tried to add my
own sky ( drew in photoshop) in After Effect. I am quite satisfied with the
combination of the sky and my houses scene.
On the
other side, after sketching and modelling my character in 3ds max, it was quite
difficult to animate the facial expression well. I also received some comments
like the character is quite weird and he is quite evil. I guess I need to pay
more attention on the face design of my character next time. The other problem
I faced was the coat of my bear. As the blue coat was quite long, when my
character walks, the coat would not move (because it was extrude from the
body). That was quite an annoying problem.
At last, I
tried not to show too much of the lower body when I was animating it. I think I
will try to use other methods to make the long clothes next time and try to
search for more online tutorials next time.
Besides,
the eyes of my bear were just black in colour, so it was quite weird if the
scene was dark. Therefore, I added two really small omni right beside his eyes
in order to make some reflection and to solve the problem.
After
handed in my final work, I think there was one thing that I am not happy with
which was the walking scene in my animation. I know that I go t some problems
in that walking cycle so I guess I will try to redo that scene later.
Also, although it was my first time to use Mudbox in this project, I am quite
interested in this software. I will pay more effort on it in my future
projects.
To conclude, there were many problems that I faced in different stage
(modeling, painting, animating), I have still tried my best to produce this
animation out. I am quite satisfied with my painted environment in the style of
Lost and Found, I will pay more effort on Mudbox next time. I also had problems
in my character facial expression,
therefore I need to pay more attention on my character facial design.
Final animation
https://vimeo.com/60241846
