Life

This is the test of the walkcycle on 2's, with the closest registration I could get estimating with my hand. I was happy with the turnout, not to mention excited. My little guy (now dubbed the Pupurun, after a Japanese jelly candy) can now walk anywhere! Well, he could, as long as he has the appropriate stands and material to be stuck into. Which is my current dilemma.

Today I spent most of my time speaking with Stephen the studio tech, and Kon, my classmate, figuring out both how to register the models on a surface and how to shoot. The camera room isn't completely set up for shooting 3D puppets yet, but the scene will need more planning in advance anyways. The actual shooting of the scene is really just going to be a one or two day session at most, the extra models of moving my character will be what consumes most of my time.

I've been trying to characterize little Pupurun to understand what would motivate him in the human world. It seems like list making is just a compulsive habit now, so it has already been applied to Pupu.

Amorphous Blob

Pros:
-Can turn into anything within mass, like a small hippo
-Can maneuver in cool ways, like rolling or having many legs
-Can get out of tricky situations

Cons:
-Doesn't have a face, so could never find true love
-Can only mimic, not be
-Is an amorphous blob

I will try making some sort of character out of these observations, and a scene to illustrate at least one of them. I am trying to limit him to mostly walking or possibly a keepalive animation for when he stands still, and be conservative with other actions.

A Return

So as there was an obvious hiatus in this project, its good to return with progress. Joining the experimental animation class has pushed this project into motion again for me, with some actual results instead of just theorizing.

I decided to simplify the form of my model, hoping it would produce an easier template to work with. My result was that I got a template that did remain mostly in one piece (some of the unfolding can end up as many little pieces), though it was still very detailed. I decided I was happy with it and created a 24 frame walkcycle to start with.



Once I was happy with the walkcycle I saved each frame of the cycle into a .obj. These got unfolded and turned into templates, scaled up 20% to fill as much of the cardstock as my home printer could handle. Unfortunately in the first batch my brain decided simple math was just too hard for a simpleton like me, and I scaled some of the models incorrectly. After crossing out all my images and printing on the other side, I got 24 templates to start cutting and forming into figures.


























For the cutting and modeling process, I used an exacto knife, glue gun, and my little sister, who has previously made a Master Chief helmet through the same program, and who I was counting on to help me understand this mess of templates. Initially it seemed like a hopeless puzzle, but once I got a sense for the template layout it became almost natural to bend it into the right shape. Initially I wanted to do all 24 of the models, but at the rate I worked at I was averaging at 1-2 hours spent assembling each model. I did only the odd number of frames first, which proved to be a good decision, as I only barely managed to get 12 done within a week (along with my other schoolwork and etc).