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Production Blog – Reference and Character Design

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I have a rough story and a few initial storyboards, so now it is time to start pulling some reference to assist in designing the look of my little short.  Since I am doing a tribute to Skyrim, I can immediately make some assumptions about the design of my characters and backgrounds.  I also know that I don’t want to shoot for gritty realism so my characters are going to have to be more stylized.  One of the first things I considered was the character of each character.  This where I started asking questions about my main character.  I wanted to know exactly who this guy was.  Sure I know he is not your normal rugged adventuring type, but that is hardly enough to start building an interesting back story.  It is a great idea to start building a character bible at this point.  A character bible is just a bunch of documentation listing everything you know about your character.  You can try writing one about yourself or some other well known character if you want to get a idea of how this.  Ask a bunch of questions about your character, and then come up with the answers.  Here is an example using the hero from my story.

  • Age: 32
  • Height: 6′ 2″
  • Weight: 163 lbs
  • Married: No.  Akward with the ladies.
  • Does he drink: Rarely.  He can’t handle liqueur well.
  • Ethnicity: Nord
  • Occupation: Primarily a fisherman
  • Can he dance:  Not well.  Two left feet.
  • Rich or Poor:  Raised poor but had a loving family

This list can go on forever really, but I try to focus on the type of things that would define my characters personality and motivations.  From this list I will develop a brief back story for my character which will help define his appearance, the story line, and the way he acts.   This back story will also influence the way he interacts with other characters, but more on that later.  So here is a little description of my character.

Jorgleth was born a fisherman’s son.  He grew up in a small village near lake Klinalth.  His home was modest, but his father was kind and hard working.  Jorgleth was not terribly fond of fishing due to his squeamishness, but he could not stand disappointing is father, so he learned to overcome his disgust at the sight of fish guts.  Jorgleth was tall, gangling, and not very popular with the ladies.  Perhaps this was because of his appearance, his lack of skill with words, or the fact that he often smelled of fish.

One fateful day as Jorgleth was traveling to the market bearing a wagon of freshly caught fish, he found himself witness to an epic battle between the guards of Winterrun and a fearsome Dragon.  Jorgleth was no warrior, and he tried his best to flea the battle.  Alas the dragon was attracted to the fish in Jorgleth’s cart, and quickly chose Jorgleth as a favorable and potentially tasty target.  The dragon descended upon Jorgleth, and through some miracle of luck, Jorgleth managed to evade by diving beneath his cart.  The distraction Jorgleth caused bought the guards enough time to set loose a carefully aimed barrage of arrows which brought down the fearsome dragon.

Jorgleth was suddenly engulfed in a wave of energy emerging from the dragon.  It was at this moment that he discovered he was Dragon Born.  Jorgleth had no idea what all of this meant, and really wanted no part of it.

Now obviously this story is not polished, but it is enough to start providing a connection to the character.  With this information I can start designing the look and feel of the character.  Now it is off to Google to find some reference.

I wanted my Hero to be thin, stylized, wimpy, and tall.  I started thinking of reference for this type of character and these two images immediately came to mind.

Tulio

Next I took a look at the Dragon Born images from Skyrim.  In particular I looked at the images of iron armor.  I could have decked my hero out with the coolest gear, but I figured that this story will take place near the beginning of the adventure, not the end.  I also know my story is going to have a mammoth, so I looked up a bunch of images of mammoths as well.  I did a similar, but much more simplified character breakdown of the mammoth as well.  Basically I cam up with the concept that Mammoths aren’t actually mean, and this mammoth is a little more intelligent and kind than usual.  With all of this great reference and character background in hand, I set off to do some sketches to define my characters look.  I will come back with those rough drawings in my next post.

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Production Blog – Storyboards

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So what is this animation going to be about?  Obviously that is the first question you should answer before getting started.  For this animation project I decided to take some inspiration from the Bethesda game “Skyrim”.  I decided it would be fun to do a parody of the game because I think Skyrim is an amazing experience worthy of some satire.  I also find that it easier to base my work of something that has already been fully conceptualized.  This saves me a ton of time deciding what things should look like.  This story will ask the question “What if the Dragonborn was a wuss instead of some tough guy?”  Not all hero’s are muscle bound uber vikings after all.  Just look at Hogarth from the “Iron Giant”.  Hogarth was probably one of the greatest heroes of all time and he was just a kid.  I kept the story short and sweet with little opportunities for some comedic interactions between our unlikely hero and a mammoth that he comes across.

With a idea in mind, it is time to start drawing up some story boards.  Story boards help to define the story flow, camera , pacing and possibly color, texture, and environment.  With that I will leave you with these first pass story boards that will help you, and I, better visualize where I am going with this.

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Production Blog -The purpose of this project.

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So what do I intend to get out of this project aside from some sweet animation?  This project sprung from a desire to learn some new software and techniques, while providing an opportunity to write some new tools to help streamline the way I work.  My motivation comes from the fact that I recently took a job that deals mainly with 3DS Max, while I have primarily been a Maya user for the last 8 years or so.  All of the knowledge I have gained as an artist, an animator, and a character TD still apply, but the new software demands that I do some things a little differently.  I have t admit that I also started this project with the intention of grabbing a certain group of peoples attention, but more on that much later.  So here is a list of the things I want to accomplish.

  • Get more familiar with rigging, modeling, and animating in 3DS Max.
  • Get more proficient at sculpting and texture painting in Mudbox.  I think ZBrush is cooler, but I don’t have it and I think Mudbox has a less steep learning curve.
  • Learn about texturing, materials, and rendering in Max.
  • Create a set of Modular Procedural Rigging Tools in Maxscript.  I did this in Maya, but those tools never saw the light of day.  I won’t go into that here, but I think it would be great to have a similar system for use in Max.
  • Build a great animation friendly rig in Max.  I will be building a biped and a quadruped that need to meet a list of criteria.  The rigs should be animator friendly, use dynamic systems when warranted, have nodes to accept mo-cap data while allowing the animator to still use the controls in parallel, work with standard animation tools like animation layers, and be solid as a rock.
  • Re-target mo-cap data to the mo-cap nodes on the rig, then tweak the animation using the layered control system.
  • Build a sweet face rig that can be applied to any of my characters with a minimal amount of setup.  The face rig should be production quality, and face poses and animation should be able to be shared among multiple characters.
  • Get all of this done in just a couple of months while maintaining a full time job and a family <– that’s the crazy part.
Obviously I plan on cutting corners to get all this done.  My characters probably won’t be the best ever, and details like environments will be simple at bet.  My focus is on getting familiar with new tools, not on making Dominance War worthy assets.

My image needs an update!

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Hello you wonderful artists out there. I come to you in search of a new image I can use to represent my shenanigans on the inter-webs. For years I have been milking the same image that I made in my early days of college. The logo was just so-so then and it hasn’t improved with age. I consider myself acceptable with a pencil, but I am more than willing to admit that you all kick my butt when it comes to the world of illustration and design.
So here is the low down. I want an image of a Griffin(Gryphon) similar in content to the craptastic logo I will be posting below. I would like a griffin character posed in some sweet, dynamic, ready for action pose. Ideally the image should elude to the fact that I am a technical animator, tech artist, character TD, or whatever else you want to call it. Basically I make characters ready for animators to move around and sometimes I get to move them all by myself. So Maya style bones, splines, and similar elements should do the trick. I leave it up to you to decide how best to portray “I am a kick ass Griffin Character TD who is about to land all up in that shit and rig the hell out of it”!
So your are probably thinking ” what! you expect me to do this for free!”. No I don’t. I get paid for my time and I plan on paying you for yours. So how much am I paying?…. $1000.. $2000!… No way! I can’t possibly afford that. I have a family to feed and I am not exactly shoveling in the cash over here. I was thinking more like $200. Is that crazy? I can be flexible, but I am not willing to go too crazy with this.
So I am posting this to pretty much every artist I know and I expect a flood of people to just leap at the chance of providing the world famous Ryan Griffin with his next logo :) So how do I handle the process of deciding who gets the job? That is a tough one right. I was hoping you could all do a rough design and then I would post said designs, and invite lots of people to vote on which one I should go with. So who is game? I swear I am good for the money… No Seriously ask my bookie.
So how about this. I will start accepting rough drawings now, and we can do the voting next Friday. Here is the info in a nice neat list form.

Griffinanimation Logo Design Challenge
1. Design a log that incorporates a griffin and elements that suggest Character TD.
2. The challenge starts now. Send your images to ryan@griffinanimation.com. Rough concepts only. Just take a few minuets and rough something out. I swear I have an imagination. I promise not to steal one of the rough drawings and pretty it up in Photoshop. You the community can persecute me if I try that crap.
3. On March 16, 2012 I will post the images and anyone can vote on which they think is most awesome.
4. I will close the voting on March 17th, and will then award the project to the winner.
5. I would like to have the finished Logo by March 24th, but I can give some wiggle room.
6. I will then pay the lucky winner.
7. I will post my sweet new logo all over the inter-webs for all to envy.

More details and questions…
Is $200 enough or am I just crazy?

I will for over extra if you can write Griffinanimation.com in some pretty way that fits with the logo for use in web banners and such.

Please pass the link to this contest to any artist types you know unless you are trying to eliminate the competition.

I would like the griffin to be sort of a caricature of me.  I can provide photos.  Later on I want to use the logo as a basis for a 3D character.  I may even need some concept for that later on.

I thank you, and my crappy looking website thanks you.

-Ryan

So here is my crap art for reference as promised.

Camera based UI

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Someone was asking me how to create a new camera and window via a shelf button with the purpose of creating an image plane based UI. The base code is actually fairly simple to write in Python. Here is an example.

# Import maya python command library

import maya.cmds as mc

# Define a window

window = mc.window(title=’FaceCtrl_Window’, w=400, h=650)

# Create a pane layout to store the modelPanel

mc.paneLayout()

# The model panel can show a camera

mc.modelPanel(camera=’FacialCtrl_Cam’ )

# Show the window

mc.showWindow(window)

You could then attach an image to the image plane of this camera to create the background for a nice slider UI like the one found in Victor Vinyals demo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxusrZiYzbw
I will elaborate on this code if anyone shows interest, but for now I just wanted to drop in and give a quick overview of the process. Here is a sweet image you can use to test your own setup.

Nurbs face rig test in UDK

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Overall I am very pleased with the performance of the Nurbs surface based, joint driven facial rig. I figured out all of the issues with this latest revision, and I learned a great deal more about how to shape the surfaces. My primary goal in this exercise was to refine the rig, but I thought I may as well try it out in UDK so I could see how it looks in engine. The results are not as good as they could be due to several factors, however I think the next round will be spot on. Once I finish the final revision of the rig, I will walk you through the rigs advantages while describing how to create one of your own.

Old Lip Sync Test Take 2

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In 2008 I did a test for the facial rig we would be using for Golden Axe. Time, lost files, and updated video codecs has left my original video without sound. I liked the animation a lot, so I decided to redo it this afternoon. Tyris Flare is the property of SEGA/Secret Level and was modeled by John Hayes. The auto rig for the face rig was designed by Rich Katz. I did the setup, poses, and skin weighting. I hope you enjoy.