Toon Shading the Van.

Just a quick post to show that I've toon shaded the van into some funky colours

I had a bit of an issue with the rings around the middle of the van. When it was smoothed it the rings would warp and change and make it look rubbish. This was because i should have extruded all sides at the same time so the vertices were merged. Even though the van isnt smoothed I still think the blocky retro feel works quite well.

Modelling Jesse.

First thing I did was too import the image files into Maya so I would have two reference points in which to start modelling the character. these were the images I used:

After attempting to model in Maya last time, it turned into a total disaster and destroyed my confidence. Knowing pretty much nothing extra when I went into Maya this time the experience was much much better and I enjoyed modelling Jesse.. even if it took 7 hours.

I started by creating a plane and splitting it in two. One of the eye section of the face and one for the mouth. After last time I made sure all the outer vertices had been snapped to the centre to avoid problems when mirroring later. I was particularly apprehensive after making the T-shirt sleeves as I thought this was going to be impossible at first look. 

This was just before I mirrored the character. I made sure to use edge flow effectively this time by deleting edge/vertexes and unneeded edges to try and reduce the overal poly count.  The Hardest part of this was the shorts. I wanted a baggy effect on the shorts and this was very difficult as I wasn't modelling with cloth but i think the shorts still look pretty good despite my struggles.

After failing at Uv texturing last time, this time i decided on a different approach. I found this tool called the 'toon shader' which essentially gives the effect of your model being a cartoon. This was very beneficial to me because it reduced a lot of time texturing. It also made sense to do it this way for my scene anyway, because they're space hippies lots of vibrant, changing, flashing colours can only support the hippie premise. I also thought that actual textures on a very much cartoony alien would not have worked as well. Plus this way the environment and character can blend seamlessly as I have also used the toon shader on the vehicle and the interior.

Designing of the Aliens.

After creating the head of the alien I then drew the rest of the body and proceded to then take it into illustrator. After doing this I was able to create a symmetrical character by tracing one half of the drawing then going over it in illustrator.

My original drawing wasn't symmetrical so
took into photoshop and mirrored it so
both sides would be same which makes Maya modelling
much easier

After tracing the design in illustrator i then used the Live Paint tool to fill in the gaps in the illustration and make it come to life a bit more. Note. the colours are not the final colours just for display.

I was very pleased with how (now named) Jesse turned out. I used to really struggle to make anything look good on illustrator and completing the design was a real confidence boost, which enabled me to model him successfully as well

My spaceship design included two characters and the second one (chester) was made in a slightly different way. After talking to my tutor I decided that modelling an entire other character would be very time consuming and would put stress on the deadline. So instead I modelled his head and then stitched the body of Jesse onto the head of Chester. This saved a massive amount of time. 

Jesse's body, Chester's Head.

I didn't need to model the rest of Chester so I sketched out
A quick design and touched it up a lot more in illustrator.

The final product. Colours are still not final but once modelled they will look (hopefully) very similar to the designs above. I really enjoyed working in illustrator for this because after having not used it for ages I thought I would have forgotten how to operate it. But as it turns out I came back and was better than before. 

First Hippie Alien.

An illustration of one of the hippie aliens that will inhabit the campervan spaceship. I found it really difficult to transform the image of my friend into an alien without it looking too cheesy. But think the final result is pretty good. The original picture had rectangle shaped glasses but i thought John Lennon esque glassess would be more suitable.

Resident of the Space Van.

This is my first design for the resident of the spaceship. Just by altering the lengths of fingers you can very easily start to make a normal looking hippie into a funky looking alien.

This was a really simple job but looks good despite how long it took. Im going to keep playing around with illustrator and make some more hippie aliens for my spaceship.

Volkswagon Spacevan.

After sketching out many ideas for a spaceship using coke bottles and vinly players as inspiration i still had nothing i could really work with in all aspects of the module. Then I had a revelation in shape of turning a VW Camper van into a spaceship with a few funky modifications. So I drew out what i thought it would look like:

VWS Van

How i came up with this is i simply imagined what a camper van would look like had it been 'Spaceshipified' and this was the result. Extend the lines flowing from the font into rear wings and remove the wheels and add bumpers with wings attached. Added a dorsal on the roof and changed the eyes to 3 on each side rather than one, to represent the Alien.

Next i wanted to bring the van to life so I took it into illustrator and used the pen tool to sketch it out. Afterwards I used live paint to come up with a variety of colour schemes.

This one is my favourite and im very sure that i will be using the wings in the final model.

red and green (obviously) Looked good at first but looks to christmassy now.

I like the red and green stripes but the red clashes to much with the blue

Another finallist for the colours i think the mix of vibrancy really embodies the van and the hippies who once
used it. 

Keying Green Screen Footage.

Learning about pulling off a clean key is a really important skill needed in the VFX module because if it is done even slightly wrong it ruins the whole illusion of the green screen.

First we imported some footage into AE first we need to so separate the actor from the background then use the screen colour ink dropper to remove the green screen.

Use a screen blur for a smoother edge (use a value of 3)

Change the black and white values to 58 for the black and 75 for the white, this will equalise the black and white for a cleaner key.

Make sure the white background is a pure white, any grey
will lessen the quality of the key.

Creating a Simple choker will also tighten up the edges of the key. Finally we need to separate the actor from the background completely. 

Actor Separated from background.

Make a Junk Matte and this will remove all unnecessary background colour. Draw a wide ring around the actor to make account for any extreme movement they might make.