WALKER!

Today I downloaded the facial model the Dean made of Walker. Dean wanted somebody to tweak it so that's what I thought I should do. Tom and I worked together on this one. I Moved the teeth, removed the eyebrows, leveled out the nose, made the eye bigger, re-made the eye socket and tweaked the shape of the head. Tom worked his magic by making the ear. Creating a new eyebrow and bevelling the nose.

Now this looks like Walker. I played around with the old Maya skin and put him in some different expressions. Tom and I make a good duo...like smokey and the bandit!

Breadbeard Skin

Howdy yall! here's some Breadbeard pics, I messed around with the colours in photoshop and they look a bit caramely! I also rendered a little head turn to see how just 1 simple light reacts with the maya fast skin.

New shots!

Hi guys, this is the new lightning sequence. The bolt comes through the roof, and strikes the grabber. The lightning zaps into the pirates and then into the lights. Lighting up the scene. The guard then stops being electrocuted and twitches.

I want the lightning to travel through the lights across the roof. I've yet to figure it out, but I'm sure J.B will tell me!

NEW SHOTS

here's two more shots to add to the animatic. the Guard being electrocuted and the guard backing out of his office into the aisles!

Another Little Skin Test!

Hey guys! I was trying to make Breabeard's beard today. No luck, I've been pulling my hair out! Anyway, I decided to take a break by playing with the maya skin again! I also waned to test whether Tom's model would look good with the blend shapes, so I decided to make an angry Breadbeard face. Turned out pretty good. I like this render more because it has more life and personality!

My Lightning Test!

Well guys, I gave the lightning a shot and this is what it looks like. It looks like the laser beam from the death star. I've never seen straight lightning before. Something tells me we will probably go with J.B's one!

It's alive! IT'S ALIVE!

I had a good chat with Jared today which really helped. He said that the main focal section on the film should be the part where the pirates come to life. Our main priority is to figure out how to get the 'pull-out' effect. Neil and I are working on that for the moment. Jared also said we should play up the slight horror aspect of the film, y'know he is in the market, by himself at night. Jared and I discussed how we could have a bit of thunder and lightning to get some mood. This means we can have a few funny jumps in the begining and some interesting angles and lighting to show how some interesting shadows. I researched some of my old favourite horror films, Boris Karloff's Mummy and Frankenstein movies, and Lucio Fulci's Zombie movies.

I liked the Frankenstein way of things so. as the guard reaches for the cereal with his grabber, he is struck by lightning, zapping the cereal and the cut out's. But we need to find some good lightning effects!

Tip Your Hat!

Hidey Ho Neighbourinos! Tom handed me his breadbeard model as so I can dress him up a bit. First thing I did was create a neck. It was pretty simple as you are not going to see it due to his hair and beard. The second thing I did was create the belt buckle. I created a cylinder and mishapped it. I added some more vertexes to create a rim around the belt. I then used another cylinder to create the skull. Sam and Dan helped me create the eye wholes using the boling tool.
After that the next thing i moved onto was the hat, and boy was that hard. I tried to create a hat to my original designs, but it ended up looking like a slice of pizza sitting on his head. It was evident that I had to change the design. I first attempted a Jack Sparrow hat...but that went horribly wrong. I then decided to go for a Barbossa hat. This is allot less pointy, and allot more extravagant. I created a sphere, cut it in half, extruded the sides and played around with the vertices. After a small computer malfunction, I was done. I showed it to Sarah and Mike Quirke and we agreed it needed something more. Using the boling tool I created some nicks in the hat, to give it a rough feel. We then all agreed that the hat needed a feather. With the help Mu and Quirkey, we created a pre-made feather within maya, using the effects. This looked great but it had like a million polygons. So I created a low poly version by creating a cylinder and extruding the sides. With the high poly model as a guide I created a low poly feather that is slightly more cartoon like.
The model is looking OK, but he desperately needs a beard and hair. Maybe the hat needs downsizing too.

The New Flesh!

In the morning. The lovely Alec Smith showed me an example o maya's instant skin. It is a texture that is supposed to react to light like skin. So, I decided to test it out on Tom's Breadbeard model. I spent a little time messing around with it and these are the results. The black one was the first attempt and the grey one was the second. The originals looked really wax like, so i decided to run an occlusion layer over them. This created a bit more contrast and grain but it still needs some tweaking. Tom and I were discussing that we need the darks a little darker and the lights a little lighter. The whole thing needs to look a lot morecartoony.

Cheers for the help Alec!