Week 9

 

Week 9

I quickly began tests and trials so that I could find out what works well and what looks good. This was crucial for me to catch up with my new idea. I began with a test setting in Maya with hills and a house. This was low detailed to match the aesthetic of the old cartoons in my influences. I then experimented with clay textures in substance painter with varying roughness, sheens, and glossiness.

Wet Clay

Dry Clay

 I decided a drier and rougher clay looks more realistic in the renderer so decided to apply it to a shape in Maya. This was difficult as the Arnold renderer was not maintaining the properties of the textures from substance painter. It appeared too metallic when I applied and rendered the base colours and bump maps. 

Modelling

Next I created a sketch of the clay-like animation version of my main actor. The likeliness of my actor was not too exact just an overall resemblance for audiences to make a connection between the two.

From here, I started to model in blender as I find the tools more user friendly and easier to learn compared to Maya. Below is a time-lapse of the tools I used to create the "Mikey" character.
 

Test Renders

Rigging

This week I also followed a rigging in blender tutorial to pose my character. This was a difficult learning process and took multiple attempts to complete. Next week I will also attempt to rig in Maya to see if it produces a better result. 

"Clay Monster" Character in blender

Finally I also added a VHS filter in blenders video editor using a template I found online. I adjusted the settings to capture the grainy and static effects of an old VHS.

VHS TEST