Name: Yuriy Kozlov id: ykozlov License: Copyright (C) 2007 Yuriy Kozlov This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ Methods: Character: I started with a cube and subdivided twice. Then I split it in half and added a mirror modifier. I selected a section on the side and subdivided further. I extruded a section of that several times for arms. I made extra segments at the elbows. When I got to the fingers, I extruded the faces separately. The legs were made by extruding faces from the bottom of the cube. Head: The head was made from a UV sphere. It was cut in half and used the mirror modifier from the body. I pulled out some vertices for the nose. I subdivided a section and pulled some in and some out for the eye sockets and eye brows. Similarly for the mouth and lips. I also subdivided and pulled out some vertices on the sides for ears. I pulled down the top a little to make it more flat. I pulled out the bottom to make a neck. The bottom of the sphere is inside the body. I pulled the front bottm vertex further down to add detail to the neck. I added two separate objects for eyes. Hair: I made another sphere to approximately coincide with the head. I deleted the faces where there shouldn't be hair. I went to the physics buttons and made the sphere into particles with a small normal and no gravity to make the hair short and stubby. Rigging: I used this tutorial to help me set up the bones: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Character_Animation I only made two bones for the spine and didn't put bones in each of the fingers as they were unnecessary. Bucket: The bucket was made from a cone. I subdivided it and moved the point up into the middle to make a flat side. The bucket should spill some water, but I didn't have enough time to get into the fluid simulation. Bat: The bat started out as a sphere. I selected the rings one by one and moved and scaled them to make the shape of the bat. Character animation: The bully gets angry when he gets hit over the head with a bucket. The getting angry animation was made by first adding a shape key for the basis grumpy face. Then I made another shape key for an open mouth. While doing this, I extruded the faces inside the mouth to make teeth. Then I made another shape key with the mouth shaped more like a figure 8, with the teeth showing through. I made an action that started out with the basis shape and ended with the angry shape, and a little bit of the open shape. I also created shape keys for the eyebrows and the nose and added those in to the end of the action as well. The rest of the animation was done with the armature. First I made a walk cycle by following the tutorial. Then I made a bending down action by rotating the spine down and pulling the arms forward and down with auto IK. Then I made a making a fist action by rotating the finger bones. This showed that I didn't have enough polygons in the thumb to create a proper fist. I added some to make it a little better, but I only did it on the left side since the mirror modifier was already applied and I was only making one fist. I made an action with the character just standing there with his arms by his side. This was needed since otherwise his arms would pop back up to sticking out sideways when there were no keys for them. I made another action where he picks up his hand, makes it into a fist, and shakes it. The fist keys were copied from the make fist action. I got a little confused with how to mix non-linear and linear editing, so I made an action for the entire time the character turns and moves over to the corner. When he gets to picking up the bat, I edited the reach down action to make his fingers fit around the bat. I used the NLA editor to put all the actions together and elongate some of them. Bucket animation: The bucket animation was done without actions. It was keyframed at various positions and rotations to fall onto the head, then roll off the head, then off the arm. Text: The text at the beginning was keyframed when it's small and in the corner. It was then moved to be in full view and keyframed (location) again. It's then moved under the floor so that it wouldn't get in the picture again. The credits text started out under the floor. About 30 frames before the end, I keyframed it in a visible place. I keyframed it again at the end to make it stay in approximately the same place on screen while the camera moved. Both texts were extruded and beveled. Lighting: There is a lamp near where the camera starts out. There is another lamp closer to the floor and at a different angle from the character. This is to make the shadows softer. There is also a light in the corner of the room where the bat is. This is to light up the character when he bends down. Room: The whole scene is inside a cube. The bottom of it is aligned with the character's feet. The bat is placed to lean against a wall. Camera animation: To get good control of where the camera is pointing, I added a cube inside the character and parented it to the spine. I made the camera track the cube. The camera was keyframed (location/rotation) after the title comes out. The camera then moves in front of the character to get a good view of him getting angry. It follows him when he goes over in the corner, then it moves into the very bottom corner of the room. Materials: The character mesh has four materials. The main one is the skin color. This has two clouds textures on it that are mapped to normal to give the skin some texture. The skin is not specular. Another material was created and everything but the head and forearms was assigned to it. This is a simplification of the clothing. The lips have another material assigned to them. The teeth have another. The bucket "metal" material is a dark gray with a clouds texture mapped to color with a lighter gray. The bat is a light brown with a wood texture mapped to color with a darker brown. The eyes are white with black pupils as a second material. The hair has a brown material. Sound: There isn't any, I didn't have enough time. Credits: None. All the models in this project are original work. Bibliography: Grass tutorial (used for hair): http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=68269 Introduction to character animation: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Character_Animation used as a reference for rigging and animating the walk cycle. Problems: Some positions ended up troublesome because of lack of extra polygons at the joints. This was particularly problematic with the thumbs and shoulders. I was confused how to mix linear and nonlinear editing, and how to make the character stay in a position after the action is over. So, some of the actions are longer than they need to be and have some keys that are somewhat irrelevant to that action. I ran out of time to add sound or go further into the storyboard. I spent too much time making the model. The light in the corner of the room is very visible. This wasn't intentional.