Final Project--A Character Animation

My final project for my Advanced 3D class at UMBC was to animate the character rig that I've been working on for the semester.  Above is the final, fully rendered, result.

 Steps for creating it:

1) I extracted audio from the film Born In Flames (1983) for the soundclip.

Here is the portion I used.

2) I imported the audio and used my character's blendshapes to lip synch with the audio.

3) Once all of my lip synching has been completed, I modeled a simple microphone to use as a prop and for eye-tracking purposes.

4) I then animated the character's torso, head (head, neck, eyes), lower body, and arms.







 5) My next step was to create a scene and render it. I created the radio station using Photoshop and bumpmapped it using Crazybump.

6) I added lighting and arranged the wall textures for the final scene.

7) Lastly, I batch rendered the scene as .PNG files and then composited the images with the audio in After Effects.

Recent Work

"Tech Tree Frog"

 Illustration. Penciled in sketchbook with graphite pencil, inked in Autodesk Sketchbook, and colored in photoshop.

"Dancing Hippo"

 

Keyframes from the "Dancing Hippo" mini-segment of Disney's Fantasia. Adapted from Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation. I chose this exercise to focus on consistency and perspective.

Slouch/Walk cycle

Slouch cycle and walk cycle adapted from Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation.

Lip Synch Practice

                                               

Lip synching exercise adapted from Preston Blair's Cartoon Animation.



Maya Human Figure

A human figure made in Maya. I used a joint skeleton and "skin bound" it to the model. This was intended to just be a practice in using only a joint skeleton rather than using muscles with the joints. Since I did not use any muscle constraints, the joints were not weighted to the skin. I modeled the figure using polygons and extruded faces. I made the polygons smooth by using the hotkeys.