Continuing with the character modelling process, this week, I decided to focus on the third character, who made no directly mentioned location, giving me many architectural areas to have creative freedom with.
Scouring interest for more referential ideas, I came across this model of a building which really inspired me with its overall shape and details. Particularly the guttering and off-centred balcony placement. I particularly wanted to accentuate height and detail within these and apply them to my own stylistic voice and visual identity.
Adapting these ideas into drawing, I wanted to give this character a kit of pipes and gutterings that could feel like structural support systems that will add contrasting details within the toon shader. I also wanted to create a light brickwork pattern within this to break up the plain white painted walls of the building. Due to the length of the design of this building, I felt I had a lot of room to work with facial expressions and intend to utilise the upper space to move the eyes and the eyebrows. As stated by Tinwell, a majority of facial expression is conveyed in the upper regions of the face, so this gives me plenty of opportunity to explore that (2015).
Beginning the modelling process, I used similar methods to those used with the first model to try and make a distinct link visually between the two buildings. Due to the fact that the interviewee this character is representing states that it was his birthday on the day of lockdown, I wanted to model him wearing a birthday hat to accentuate and play around with the visual ideas involved with the spoken content.
Using the same prior methods with the tile modelling and the toon shader application, I feel I was able to get a neat and effective tile representation with this method and have carved an effective way of creating tiles roofs which will speed up the modelling process later as this stage of production progresses. Reflecting on the current state of the model, I feel the legs are too thick and short and do not fully embody the length I was aiming to achieve within my concept art that matches the longer main ‘body’ of the building. This length in the legs will also aid the production of walk cycles later on as it provides more space for effective mesh deformation in the knee bends, easing the process of skin weighting with IK handles.
Since contextually, it is this interviewee’s birthday, I began modelling different ‘party’ hats that viewers would associate with birthdays visually. I thought if I incorporated this within the model throughout the entire three-minute film, it would make a subtle reference to the first spoken line of the character and also utilise additional secondary animation.
Initially, my idea was to create a ‘polka’ dot effect by using additional mesh shapes. However, this proved to be quite messy and did not have the right effect when rendering, as it was not explicitly clear that it was intended to be a birthday hat and looked more like a stylised ‘dunce’ hat.
In order to improve the overall audience associative imagery, I found a reference image of a very standard birthday party hat and tried to model around this, especially in terms of the colour scheme. Since the key associative element of the birthday hat seems to be a facial ‘spring’ or a pompom, I tried to replicate this by using a single pink sphere.
Below showcases the finished model, with an extra door added, which could potentially work like an additional ‘mouth’, so to speak, to create a more interesting overall visual representation of speech, and utilise the anthropomorphic elements of the design in a way that could make more unique expressions.
Reflectively looking at the model as a whole, I feel it works stylistically as it allowed me to explore my own stylistic ideas without a specific location contextual design. This being said, I feel the simplicity of it will blend and match the other models created so far despite this different approach. During the process of modelling, however, I felt I could have potentially pushed the detail more with the brickwork and potentially looked into the use of ‘bump maps’ which are “greyscale maps that add simulated height or depth to a model’s surface” (Chopine, 2011, p. 160). Utilizing this, I feel I could create a more overall detailed model, which would benefit from less extensive lighting to give the impression of detail. However, once again, the film aims to remain simplistic in visual design to reduce render times and also create more focus on contextual dialogue and narrative over aesthetic presentation.
References
Tinwell, A. (2015) The Uncanny Valley in Games and Animation. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press.
Chopine, A. (2011) 3D Art Essentials: The Fundamentals of 3D Modelling and Animation. Focal Press.