Observation!

For my negotiated project i am going to go through the process of making a 3d wolf. Playing around and getting used the the different aspects without actually completing them. Just to get an idea of the time and effort needed.
Ill be looking into rigging a 4 legged creature as well as animating it.

I made an important discovery today about the runcycles of dogs as opposed to runcycles of horses.

Horses jump with their front feet and lands with the back ones first.
(in mid air their legs are gathered and body leaning forward then backwards before landing)

Dogs (and cats) jump with their back feet and land with their front ones.
(in mid air their legs are stretched and body leaning backwards then forwards)

Maybe this is common knowledge, i dont know, but i thought it was interesting.

Here is a little test i did on a premade dog-rig:

Pistol..

A bit more progress...
Some very simple colors just to easily separate the different parts.
Some parts need smoothing, but im gonna keep them that way until everything else is finished.

Still pirategun...

The pirategun is coming along nicely.
The bigger parts were actually harder to make than the small ones. Partially becuase the small ones are a certain shape and youll recognise them as that shape even if theyre slightly off. Thats not the same with the big parts like the wooden shaft and the barrel. And those parts needed a ot of cleaning up since theyre prob gonna have different maps on them so a minimum of faces is always good.
anyway here it is so far. Just a few more bits n bobs, and then its probably on to texturing.

Working on the gun

I am still modeling the Pirategun. It is starting to take shape, but the hard part is in the details. These types of guns have a lot of wierd little parts that normal guns dont have. This type of gun is a couple of hundred years old.

It works just like an oldschool cannon. Gunpowder and an iron ball inside the tube, and then a little mechanism to ignite the whole thing on the outside. Thats it... but it has to look good...

Heres a very lazy playblast.

Thoughts on dissertation topic

In one of Anns lectures on what topic to choose for out dissertation, she mentioned something about the link between ancient mythologies and modern day superheroes.
Being a total nerd for anything mythology-related, i decided to go for that, and hopefully find an approach to it that made it more interesting. A little bit of epic, if at all possible.

That is what i love about mythologies. Its ability to go above and beyond epic. Despite the fact that even thoguh they are totally made up and sometimes really really wierd, they can also give you a sort of epiphany that makes you think twice about its meaning, its importance to ancient societies as well as our own!!!






















This is where the superheroes come in. After reading up on ARCHETYPES, which is the main link between it all, in both mythologies and superhero comic books, i see a reaccuring theory that makes me chuckle. Namely that superhero stories are our modern day mythology! They might mean more than we think. And i am going to find out!
This is going to be epic. EPIC!!!

Corked- Working with 3rd years

"Corked" was one of my favourites of all the 3rd year students presentations. And luckily i was chosen to help them make it.

It is a story of a pirate who tries to escape from the prisoncell of rival pirates. It is a comical story with a twist in the end and has a snappy, high energy feel from start to finish.

I was first assigned to work on the weighting of the 3d characters. But we had some problems and im not particularly good with that, so a bit later i got to start working on the blockthrough. Which i actually really enjoy, because like an animatic, it gives you a very clear idea of all the visual stuff like timing and the shots etc...

After just a few days working with Andy & co, we had powered out the first 8 shots. Though the animation is very very rough, you still get the idea.



I am looking forward to continuing this process, but since i am home in Norway and dont have all the necessary files, they gave me another job well suited for my interest; making a gun.
THE gun that is going to be used in the film.

I enjoyed making the highpowered-fullyautomatic-superkiller for our sfx project. But this time its a bit more subtle. The gun im making is a classical 18th century "pirate-gun".











Andy gave me a toy gun to use as reference, but i realized we have an almost identical (real) one hanging on a wall at home. So that should be plenty to go by.