Over the past week I’ve been designing my character and planning out a storyboard for the animation. The character I am making is not just being made for this course but also for a game that a friend is making. The game is a horror where the main character explores an abandoned facility where humans have been spliced with various different animals, which is where my character comes in.
Storyboard
I plan on making a half human half bat creature that will follow the main character/camera through an old dark basement, the main character (camera) will most likely just be a pair of hands to avoid unnecessary modelling, rigging and animating.
To help plan out the story boarding I’ve been doing basic sketches on what the monster will look like to figure out how it’ll move around the basement and to help with the essay, finding issues early on so that I can address them as soon as possible.
For the storyboard so far I’ve just been drawing/planning still shots with small notes such as where to include sound and camera movements.
Research
For research I have been looking at different bats, how their wings are built, how different species move and have settled on the vampire bat. When I thought up the bat human hybrid I pictured it with one wing and one slightly deformed arm, along with the fact it lives in a basement it would be limited to the ground or slight gliding, the vampire bat is the only bat that can fly, walk, run and jump which is why I chose it to base my design off of it.
When researching and designing my character I’ve been looking into;
-Rigging/weighting wings
-nCloth for simulating wing skin
-Blend Shapes
-Xgen fur/hair
Next week
-Finalise sketches for modelling reference
-Finalise storyboard
-Start bulking out essay