Some more fixes...

I did more modeling on my girl model, just some of the stuff I missed last week.

I added an eye specular(transparency) on a separate sphere outside the eyeball. I made the inside of the mouth for the girl, which I tested with a smile.

I add laces to the edges of her skirt, shoes, sleeves. Again, this is done with transparency mapping.

After comparing the hand size to the face, I find the hands are, indeed, too big. The one on the right is the hand at 80%, much better :)

Her face is no longer using mirrored texture. Her freckles look very natural now.

 I shrank her feet by this much.

After the feet-shrink, I adjusted some body proportions too. 

Oh and, I think I like yellow banner decorations better than the purple ones~

Almost there!

This week's only task was to texture my girl character, after reaching this stage, I still have a couple things to do before I can move onto rigging:
(notes to self:)
-make alternate color variation (as seen in concept art)
-add laces, missing white ring detail on skirt shadow
-brighter skirt front
-more blush
-shape head mesh to better match concept art
-bigger eyes
-model inside of mouth
-add shader and render character turn-around sequence
-
...

Library Interior Concept Art

I'm done with my library concept art! Here is the final lineart:

Here is the final colored version, castle interior is relatively unsaturated to the outside. To view full size image click here:

http://www.ecuad.ca/~qwang12829/images/library_colored.png

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p.s. I stumbled upon this image on the internet, now I see why big feet are hard for animation...

Interior Design WIP

Since I am out of inspiration on the lion-design, I turned to do some interior design instead. Time is a bit scarce this week so this is all I can manage to produce so far：

I made a compilation of castle-related reference images, the style i want is between a medieval castle and a gothic church, but cartoon-fied.

This is my design of the library interior so far. This is the girl's classroom. From music to geography, biology to history, she learns pretty much everything in this room. There will be many more details to add to it (ship-in-a-bottle, draperies, carpet, desk, scrolls, potion bottles, snow globes, banners, emblems, books...etc).  I drew this in orthographic so I can move things around easily without worrying about the perspective too much. I will color this when the lineart is complete.

This is a page from my sketchbook. I was exploring the look of the windows. I want it to have a subtle feel of cellblock fence to it, but not too obvious. I've been looking into churches' stain glasses and some art nouveau patterns for inspiration.

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...

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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:

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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)

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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.)