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).