2/26 Update

This week I did some topology fix and UV layout for the girl character. Her hair is still a big concern for me, but i'll see how much I can save it at the rigging stage. I'll put bones inside her braids, and also make the hair mesh squash&stretch-able to have more control on its deformation.

Andddddd more lion designs, this time i took inspiration from many different areas. I am still not satisfied with the result so maybe next week I'll move onto environment design and put the lion design on hold. While designing the environment, I might be able to extract some elements from it to use in the lion's design so it could make more sense doing this the other way around.

Some Modeling and Re-Designing

Over the reading break, I have been modeling my girl character. I got stuck at the hair part because with the current design, it will be in the way of the arms for sure. I might have to re-think my hairstyle in order to make this work.
I will go over the topology with Bob this friday before moving onto painting the diffuse map.

I made another toon render on my cartoon head dummy (upgraded now!), this time with toon outline (not rendered but post-added in AE). I like the look better, but I wonder if it'll look fitting in the environment later. At least it looked great in Logorama~

I explored the look of the lion more. I took the advices given to me last class and went for another direction. My first try went a little out of control. Looking at it now, it'll be wayyyyy too much work for me to animate all those floating "manes" so this design cannot be accepted.
I am running out of time so this is all I have so far for lion re-designing. I shall explore more next week, argggh!

Animatic and Lion Update

Animatic update:

www.ecuad.ca/~qwang12829/movies/gf_animatic2.mov

Things I did:
-added a few more frames that explains the action better.
-cut out the dining room scene so the beginning part is more brief. One less room to make in production yay!
-added sound effects and some bgm which in my mind, suits the mood but doesn't connect very well with each other.

Issue:
-climax is still not very climatic...
-bgm needs to improve...

---------------------------

BEATS of my story:
1. Girl attends her morning class.
2. Girl runs away from castle with winged lion.
3. Girl is scared (climax)
4. Lion looks out for girl.
5. Girl wakes up next day.

A more detailed breakdown:

---------------------------

The design of the lion has been further developed. Here is the lion's character sheet.

Some more reference images I gathered for the lion's wing and fur modeling ( I'm going to paint most of the fur on the texture)

 -----------------------------

Since I am taking Bob's lighting and rendering class, I've been doing some render tests. Ultimately I would like to render with maya software so the render time won't be an issue that holds me back.
(TopLeft: texture only; TopMid: ambient light; TopRight: VRay SSS; BottomRow: sampler info, facing normal.)