The Last Few Days: Schoolyard!

The Schoolyard is where a lot of stuff happens in my film, and it’s also the most object-heavy of any of my locations. Also, it’s an exterior, which posed a whole other set of problems, such as making sure that you can’t see the edge of the ground-plane in any horizon shots while also making it not look like there’s absolutely nothing in the world around the Schoolyard area. Anyway, all I can say, really, is thank god for Trees!

So let me start from concept all the way to the so-far finalized status!

My work was cut out for me when my amazing and talented concept artist, Theo Aretos, did concept paintings for the Schoolyard environment:

This painting was done just to get the color scheme down, and at first I found it interesting considering how dry it felt, but then I realized that that’s actually a smart choice, since I want the schoolyard to feel like a sort of unwelcoming place. Also, this entire time I imagined the ground being covered in grass (because at the end of the day, I am a very very uncreative person when it comes to visual design…), so the idea of having it be a DIRT ground was simultaneously new to me, interesting, better than my original idea, AND it’ll make rendering easier (because fuck if I know how I was gonna render an entire field of grass!)

I then asked him to change up the design of the school-building and to also do a few more playstructure designs, as well as a topographical layout of the ground, and I then got these beauties:

And so my work began. First off, I started by modelling all the things I knew I needed: a picket fence, a stone wall, the school building, and whatever else I could think of in the way of playstructures to fill the area. Check them all out!

Picket Fence! (this was real easy to do, just a lotta copy and paste)

Brick Wall!

(To make the bricks seem authentic, I made a brick-randomizer thingimajigger that basically had clusters attached to 42 different points on a lattice surrounding a base brick shape, and over time those clusters all were programmed to jiggle around in 3D space. As a result, it made… a bit of a difference.)

Monkey Bars!

You can’t really see it from this angle, but this structure was meant to look extra terrifying because the bars go up and down very sharply over the length of the structure.

Sandbox!

Complete with sandcastle, shovel, and bucket. 🙂

Basketball Thingy!

I legitimately forget what it’s called.

You like the hoop, though? Yea, that was fun to make. 🙂

Play Structure Thingy!

This is actually the only play structure that will actually be USED in the story in an at-all important way (it’s what the Mean Girl Gang sits on as they watch the hero enter the monster mansion) and I ended up using the same model as what I’ve been using before since it looked good enough to begin with. I just wonked it up a bit to make it less perfectly straight and symmetrical, I got rid of the swing-set next to it, and later I plan on texturing it so that it looks like it’s actually made of wood and not perfect 3D cubes. (I also plan on texturing everything else in the play yard, but that goes without saying I guess)

Terrifying Slide!!

True story: my dad walked into my room at one point over break and saw me modelling this, and he said “You know, slides aren’t supposed to go up …” Anyway, my point in bringing that up is that the physical nature of these objects are not meant to serve their function, but rather serve the overall stylistic purpose of the play-yard, which is to be a sort of intimidating, terrifying place… but not in a super overt way. Really, though, this is the most overtly creepy thing in the entire schoolyard, I think.

Aaand of course, THE SCHOOL

With a little flag on top~


So yea! Once I modelled all these things, I then had to choose one more thing: TREES.

Luckily, Maya comes with a collection of built-in tree types that you can just paint into your scene, so I went through all of them and went with these Birches:

Cute, non? Also I looked up Birches and apparently they’re wide-spread all over the Northern Hemisphere in temperate climates, and it’s the national tree of like 3 different countries I think…. so I guess I did a good job of making my film be location-ambiguous!

Anyway, once that was all decided upon, it was time to painstakingly put all this shit together. Why painstakingly? Because this is a lot of memory for my computer to handle. But thank god for Layers in Maya, so I can turn on and off objects to make the program’s running speed faster! Woo.

And there ya go. Oh, and if you need further explanation of what will happen where in my film, here you go too:

Bam~

Oh and one last thing about the schoolyard — if you’re concerned that some of the play structure objects seem a bit low-res, then let me defend myself with two rationales behind the relatively short amount of time I spent on modelling everything (this entire thing was put together over the course of like 3 or 4 days):

1) A lot of this shit is going to be waaay in the background, with the exception of the play structure that the mean girl gang sits on

2) I don’t have much time left so I gotta cut corners somewhere…

So yea. Hope this was interesting to read! And as always, there is certainly more to come. 🙂

Reference Mishap

So the last time I showed a reference mishap, it was one of my fraternity brothers slapping my face when my eyes were closed.

But this time, it’s completely my fault.

This time, I was shooting reference for this one shot where a monster is holding onto a chandelier and swinging it around as he laughs at the main character.

Here are the storyboard panels that explain what I’m talking about:

Yea. Top-notch drawing skills there. (Also, this is the same shot that I modelled/rigged the chandelier for, btw)

Anyway, luckily there’s a bench-swing outside of my house that was perfect for getting reference for this shot on.

However, when I tried to hold onto the chain with only one hand… well, shit happened. And it was entertaining as fuck.

More to come!

Finally, some 2D Animation!

That’s right! I’m officially kicking into gear the 2D-animated half of the film, and so far it’s looking pretty good! Then again this first shot was really easy since I did it directly from reference.

Basically, I’m doing the only 2D spoken line of the film, (there used to be two but one of them got eliminated recently, you’ll see soon enough) when the Main Monster Ghost guy floats up to the Hero and says “Hey there, new guy! Why aren’t you partying?? Not having a good time?”

So what I did basically was film reference, cut down that reference into one take I liked, and then exported that take into a .jpg sequence so that I could then feed it as frames into Plastic Animation Paper, the 2D animation software I’m using, and then animate directly on top of it.

Check out the passes here:

(Yes, I do do most of my reference shirtless. But sometimes I put a shirt on because I’m aware that I may want to put it online, but I guess I forgot this time…)

And here are the 2 full takes (the side-view and the front-view) in their latest form (it’s still all rough obviously) because it’s higher-quality in this video:

As you can see, I used Rotoscoping to get body/poses/proportions/everything, but then drew over that to sort of “Cartoonize” it, if you will. After all, the final version of the main monster isn’t going to look like me at all, and if you looked closely, you may have noticed that its proportions are thinner than mine (you can see that I drew the monster’s shoulders much closer together/I made the chest less wide/I made the neck much thinner than my own), so it’s not ~complete~ rotoscoping. Also, that tail had to be figured out completely independently, so that’ll be a challenge, haha.

Anyway, here’s an up-cl0se image of what the Main Monster will look more like:

However that design is a little bland, so I played around with accessories I could give him to make him more interesting/give him more character:

(click to enlarge) (also, spot the Lady Gaga one)

Anyway, his design isn’t done yet, but I really like this base that I have. It’s cute like Casper The Ghost, but it’s more grown-up looking, and honestly I’m not trying to be super-original with my designs at this point, I just need to get it out so I can make viewable product as soon as possible. ‘Cause NOW’S THE TIME WHEN IT ALL HAPPENS! Wooo and it’s really happening, heyyy.

More to come, yo.

– Max

MOM DAY!

That’s right! I have finished rigging the Mom character in my film! And therefore finished rigging ALL OF THE 3D CHARACTERS OF MY FILM!! WAHOOOOO!!!! I’M DONE WITH CHARACTER RIGGING YAAAAYYYYYY

(I hate rigging, in case you couldn’t tell. Although I have improved at it quite a bit since I started working on this film, so hey, every cloud has a silver lining.)

However, making the mother was an interesting challenge. After all, just like how I made the head-models of the Mean Girl’s Friends, I also made the Mom’s head by taking the Hero’s Head and morphing it around until it looked like a different person. And I figured that it should really work this time, since at least the mom is related to the hero, right?

However, the challenge here was taking a male head mesh and transforming it into a female one. And not just that — a female one that’s much older. So while I was doing this, I had to figure out a lot of things — what makes a person look older vs. younger? What makes a person look female vs. male?

Anyway, below is photographic documentation of the 15 deformations I put on the Hero Head mesh to turn it from young-male to adult-female. Also, with each transformation, I included a nicely-rendered version of the head, as well as an in-program screencap of the head showing the lattice deformations I implemented:

FIRST THREE TRANSFORMATIONS (the first head is the original base head):

As you can see, my first prerogative was to make the face longer, the nose longer, and the chin more pointed. All ofthose things make the human face look older.

NEXT FOUR DEFORMATIONS:

What I then did was work in more elderly-looking cheekbones (aka more defined ones), I worked with elongating the face more, and I also did a hair-test to see how it looked…….. and it looked like the Main Character in drag. Bad drag. So I knew I still had a ways to go.

NEXT FOUR DEFORMATIONS:

At this point, I saw that it was starting to look more female, so I created a new Skin Texture, and I also think this was the point when I manually moved some of the vertices around the Eyelids to make them more “feline,” if you will. Really all that means is I pulled them up the face, and towards the sides. After all, this is just basic Drag Science — you always brush makeup up and outwards from the center of the face, never down. It makes you look more feminine — true fact!

LAST FOUR DEFORMATIONS:

And here I think I was just doing final touches, getting everything shaped nicely. Aaand that was that!

So yea. And as for making the body, that was simple, because making body meshes is kind of easy.  Haha, I admittedly am not giving nearly as much attention to the body meshes as I am the face meshes…

Now, before I finish this post, let me say that as for the design of the mom character, I admittedly didn’t put much thought into it. After all, this was mainly because I already had the perfect reference to base my character design off of!

Yep — that’s my mom! I even gave the Mom 3D model a shirt that my own real mother actually owns/wears (in the picture on the right). My mom is the best mom I know, so why not base my mom-character off of her? 🙂

Also, I think it’s awesome that my mother character has a nice big dark mane of hair like this. After all, most moms in popular culture NEVER look like that!

That is, unless they’re evil mothers…

…I’m not gonna lie, when I watched Tangled with my family last summer, all of us (and especially my mom) couldn’t help but feel slightly offended at the portrayal of Mother Gothel as a very obviously Jewish/Middle-Eastern-looking woman. Which, I mean, Jews/Arabs have always been the face of evil in pop culture, let’s face it. (Go back to some Original Series Star Trek episodes, look at the way the Klingons used to look, and try to deny that they totally looked like stereotypical portrayals of Arabs.) So with all of this, I guess I’m trying to do some community service with my thesis film as well. After all, Jew girls can be nice, too! Dark curly hair and all. 🙂

Alright, sorry to get superficially pseudo-political there. Have a good week y’all!

More to come.

Hey Max What Did YOU Do Today?

What did I do today?  I RIGGED A MOTHERFUCKING CHANDELIER THAT’S WHAT I DID.

I based the chandelier’s mesh off of these three photos:

And this is a video of me demonstrating how the Chandelier Rig works (because oh yes I will have to animate it.. and that will be a bitch.)

That’s all. Hope you had a good weekend! I know I didn’t.

~More To Come

 

EDIT: Since the video is so low quality, here’s a nicer quality image of what the chandelier looks like in full

Let’s Talk Numbers

So Fall Semester will be over in 3 or 4 weeks, and after that, all the time I have left to work on my film is Spring Semester! (And any breaks that happen from now until like, April)

So because of this, the question that’s certainly on my mind, is CAN I GET THIS FILM DONE IN TIME?!?!?!

Well, let’s look at the numbers.

As of today, (Sunday, November 25th) I have 130 DAYS LEFT to work on my film before Picture Lock.

Also, in each shot of animation, I need to do the following:

– Shoot Reference footage

– Animate the main body motions

– Facial animation (both for lipsynch and emotional reactions)

– Hair Animation (if I have time)

– 2D Animations for some shots

– Occasional Special effects

But how many total individual shots are there in my film? (as in, camera cuts): THERE ARE 74. (not counting opening and closing titles)

Oh my god, Max, that’s a lot! You won’t be able to get that all done in time!

Oh but I think I will, brain. After all, those 74 shots can be consolidated together into scenes. And currently, I’ve grouped those 74 shots into 30 different Maya Scene Files.

That’s still a lot!

I know, I know, but calm down! ONLY 17 of those 30 Scene Files include intensively-animated 3D Assets

And if you want to break it down even more, there are 27 different instances of animation in my film (this doesn’t count characters who are standing idly in the background, but this does count each time a character does or says something. So if there’s a shot where one kid rolls a ball and another kid kicks the ball, I count that as two different instances of animation)

OK… But is that a lot?

Trust me, it’ll take time. But I think it’ll fit in the time-frame. After all, I can get a pretty good first rough pass of one character done per day, at least. In fact, that’s the minimum work-rate I’m holding myself to, and I’ve been able to keep that pace up consistently for the last 5 or so days with no problem. So at that rate, I will most CERTAINLY have a rough-layout animated version of my film done by the end of December (which hasn’t started yet). And if I really can follow through with this pace, then I’ll have a rough-animated version of my film before Spring Semester even starts.

Also, to prove it, check this video out:

In this shot are (what I consider) 3 different “Instances Of Animation”:

1) The mean girl saying “Sure! Roll me the ball”

2) The Hero rolling the ball to the girl and then jumping in fear when she kicks the ball

3) The mean girl kicking the ball

And consequently, this shot was completed over the course of 3 days. And this is 3 out of the 27 shots!

So with that said, at this rate it’ll seem that I’ll have all of Spring Semester to get my Final Animation completed. And once that’s completed, then… well, then it’s completed! And of course I have to render, composite, do special effects, bla bla bla, but the main hard work (and the main focus of my work, since I want to be a 3D Character Animator) will be done, and boy will THAT be exciting! ;D

 

But hold on there, cowboy! You’ve completely neglected 2D Animated Assets! Will you have time for that?

 

Nice catch, brain. And while you’re right that I haven’t really factored the 2D assets in, I feel like that will actually not be too much of a problem either. After all:

 

– There are only 2 lines of 2D Dialogue

– There are only 2 shots in which 2D characters do something other than dancing that doesn’t involve any 3D assets

– There is only 1 shot when a 2D character and a 3D character actually touch each other and make contact/interaction

– There is only 1 shot in which 2D characters do something that causes a reaction in some 3D characters (when the monsters all scare the Mean Girl Gang away)

And the rest of the 2D animation, literally, is just monsters dancing. And since I’m not super-focused on making the 2D animation impeccable (in fact I want it to have a somewhat rough look), I’m not stressing myself out too much about it. (yet)

 

So yea. Don’t worry! This project will be completed. And as always, there is lots more to come! And since this post didn’t have any pictures in it, then let me post this picture of Kate Bush I just discovered today, because she’s so pretty in it. 🙂

Two Images For Thanksgiving

The first one is stupid so I’ll get that one out of the way:

 

 

…yea. Sorry I’m a dork. Also sorry I didn’t put any effort into making this image not-creepy. Hopefully you don’t have nightmares tonight after seeing this.

 

Anyway, hopefully this second image will help make you happier:

 

This is me working from video reference! Woooo. Hmm and now that I look at it I realize she needs to bend her neck more to hit that pose. But yea! I thought this image was funny seeing me acting and then seeing this character making the same pose. Also yes that is my desk I’m sitting on. (I needed something to sit on so that my feet weren’t touching the ground.)

 

Anyway, yea! Just workin’. And Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!

 

More to come. 🙂

Light, Camera…

…ACTING.

 

Yes, I have finally really hit the point in the production of my film where all there is to do is to ANIMATE. But of course there were a few roadblocks left I had to overcome today before I could start.

 

1) I needed to edit together the best takes of the reference I shot of all the Dialogue. (And I still need to shoot some more reference, but I’ve done the bulk of it today and yesterday)

2) I also needed to import Archer, Bil, and Edgar (the mean girl’s three friends) into one of the shots so I can start animating it!

 

But alas, I encountered a minor issue with that — Having 6 rigs in one Maya file will cause your computer to SLOW. DOWN. Like a MOTHERFUCKER. To the point where it’s just not workable anymore. And when I encountered this, at first I was like “shit shit shit shit shit” because I got a film to animate, man!!! But this problem turned out to have a really simple solution: Layers! Basically, the visibility of each character has its own layer, and when I’m animating a character or two characters interacting with each other, I only turn those layers on. The rest can just stand there invisibly, haha.

 

And with that said, I now have my first shot set up and ready to animate (it’s the scene when the Mean Girl gets the Hero’s ball, kicks it over the wall, and the Mean Girl’s friend tells the Hero that he “ain’t getting that ball back”), and it’s SOOOOO EXCITINGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111111111111

 

But that took pretty much all day today to set up and figure out. For now, though, I leave you with a pretty render of the Mean Girl and her posse of cool friends.

 

 

Gnight y’all! And of course, More to come.

Concept Art and Modelling and Stuff!

So my friend/former-fellow-Dreamworks-Intern, Theo Aretos, agreed a while back to do concept paintings for my thesis film! Which is GREAT because I fucking SUCK at designing things. (and yet I took on the challenge of designing my own characters, but whatever, what’s done is done)

 

Anyway, he has so far gotten 2 paintings done: The exterior of the Monster Mansion, and the initial Hallway inside the Monster Mansion that the Hero enters before stumbling upon the party room:

 

And to be quite honest, I am absolutely swept away by these paintings. They’re exactly what I asked for, too — Not super-finished, sketchy paintings that get the shapes and colors down, but don’t bother too much with the detail. So before you get all concerned, I purposefully asked him to keep the paintings sketchy. Because that way, it gives me more freedom when I model these structures into real life! And really, the important thing that these paintings give me is style  and color composition, which are the two things that I am the absolute WORST at when it comes to film-making. So thank you so much Theo!! And I can’t wait to see the rest of the paintings! (That’s right y’all, he’s designing the School Yard, Kid’s Room, Kid’s House, and Party Room as well! And he described his idea for the Party Room recently and I pretty much died with how awesome it sounds, so YEAH BABY shit is getting DONE.

 

Anyway, and just in case you’re concerned about whether or not I’ll be able to model these paintings into real-life 3D models, worry no further!

 

These are 2 production shots of the exterior of the Monster Mansion. It’s not finished, as you can obviously tell, but already it’s looking pretty fancy, in my opinion! I really only need to append another handful of structures and fix some of the sizes before it’s time to start texturing and lighting it! Wooooo.

 

BUT IN OTHER NEWS~

 

I have officially gotten my entire cast-list for voice actors for my film! YESSIREEE! And without further adieu, I give you the list (In order of appearance):

 

Hero: Jesse Pilchen

Hero’s Mom: Celia Rivera-Baron

Mean Girl: Christina Cook

Mean Girl’s Friends (Archer, Bil, and Edgar): Michael Malconian

The Party Monsters: Whichever of my Fraternity Brothers feel like going into a recording booth (none of the party ghosts have any real lines, so it’s not a big deal)

Main Party Ghost: Me!

 

Yes, I’m doing one of the voices. After watching my Animatic through all its stages, I’ve realized that, while I can’t really pull off a middle-shool-boy voice, and CERTAINLY not a middle-school-girl voice, I definitely CAN pull off a goofy Ghost voice. The rest of the actors, however, are other USC students, and I’m SUPER excited to record them! I’ve been struggling to lock down a date with the ADR people, though, but with luck, it’ll happen this coming Wednesday (yes, on Halloween. I’m aware of how perfect that is.).

 

ANYWAY, ONE LAST BIT OF NEWS~

 

I’ve officially decided on which 2D animation software I’m going to use for my film! This was a point of concern because I really don’t like Flash or Toon Boom, because they both function in Vector-Based lines, which quite frankly look like shit in my opinion. They just don’t look like the lines that I draw on paper, whereas animation software that works in Bitmap Lines end up producing work that looks WAY better. It requires more work, but I know that it will pay off in the end. Also, I’m considering having the party monsters be colorless (just filled in with white) both for simplicity’s sake and for style. After all, juxtaposing a full-color world with 2D black-and-white monsters will be… quite jarring, won’t it? 😉

 

Anyway, after shopping around for free (or very cheap) animation software, I found that the best match for me was PAP, or “Plastic Animation Paper,” which is a really fucking fantastic free program that can import footage, animate bitmap-cels on top of it, and it exports that animation really beautifully.

 

I only got this program a couple days ago (and I’ve been partying this past weekend due to Halloween) so I only have a very rough sketch-up of the first bit of 2D Animation I’m doing for the film:

 

 

…and even that rough sketch of the animation isn’t done. I did all of that today though (including figuring out how the goddamned program works, which took time in of itself) so as you can see it’s a fast, lightweight program that, if I put the effort into it, will produce good product. So yay!

 

Oh, and P.S. to those non-animation peeps reading this, the difference between Bitmap Lines and Vector Lines is such: Bitmap Lines are based on pixels, and when you scale them up in size they lose quality. Vector Lines are based on mathematical points in space, and when you scale them up, the points get scaled up, and the computer just fills in based on the new numerical location of those points. So as a result, they lose no quality when they’re resized. However, Vector Lines (because they’re so geometric in nature) don’t look nearly as natural as Bitmap Lines… it’s sort of like the difference between buying a cake from the store and making it yourself. Although the quality isn’t necessarily as perfect as the store-bought cake, there’s more heart in the home-made one.

 

Anyway, that’s all for now! Hopefully this is enough progress to show to my class tomorrow (it’s my group’s turn to present and I’m kind of nervous because I spent 2 of the last 3 weekends either partying or going to NorCal, soooooooooo yea I didn’t actually make that much progress in the last 21 days, gulp) but yea.

 

More to come!

Mean Girl Day!

I titled this post “Mean Girl Day” because today was ALL about the Mean Girl in my film! And by that, I mean, SHE IS RIGGED! And I now officially have 2 rigged characters in my film. Which is also super great because when you combine the Hero and the Mean Girl in my film, they do about 90 percent of all the 3D-Animated acting of the film. Because after all, the Mean Girls’ friends (of which I plan to have 4 or 5) collectively have 1 line of dialogue (one of them asks the mean girl a question and that’s about it), and the Mother appears in like 2 shots. So, yea.

But in my process of making the Mean Girl the wonderfully beautiful bitch that she is, I took a lot of screencaps, and I wanted to share with you, dear reader, my journey in creating her. And to be honest, my reason for devoting a post like this to her is because her character design really is the greatest I’ve ever done for any character I’ve ever designed — I’m extremely proud of her, and she continues to support my theory that VILLIANS ARE ALWAYS THE BEST CHARACTERS, design or personality-wise. I’ve always fucking loved villains, whether it be the Borg from Star Trek, or Madame Medusa from The Rescuers, or Madame Dubois from Madagascar 3 — Villains are just always amazing.

So here you go:

As all character designs must, the Mean Girl started off as a drawing.

Once I had decided that I liked her having big cat-like eyes, large eye-lashes, a small nose, pouty lips, and a heart-shaped face, I went and sculpted her out in Sculptris, a free 3D sculpting program. And as you can see, this image is NOTHING like what she ended up looking like, and she certainly had some weird fucking beginnings.

But as I worked into her more, things improved, and as I’ve already shown in older posts, I used this hi-res mesh as direct reference to make a Quadrilateral Polygonal model that would become her final face.

Thankfully, I had the sense to soften her brow ridge though, because it was way too fucking intense.

(New head on the right)

And then I had to decide what kind of hair she’d have! I knew I couldn’t have that long voluptuous hair, because it would be impossible to animate. I went with a short ‘do with a large swooping bang, but I knew it needed an accessory to make her more unique looking.

At first I wanted to give her a cute, youthful, girly hairband with fake plastic flowers in it. But then my friend said “No, give her a bow like Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl!” and I was all “Who’s Blair Waldorf?”

But I then looked her up, saw how awesome the bow was, and went with that instead.

I mean duh. The bow is way better.

It became clear at this point, though, that I was NEVER going to escape the Jimmy Neutron comparisons with this film, because not only do people see my main character and think he looks like Jimmy, but now people will look at my villain and think she looks like Cindy!

But really, I like to think of my Mean Girl as a mix between Cindy and Blair Waldorf….

So it’s sort of like a more bitchy, more mature, more stylish version of Cindy. So ha, take that!

But then I had to give her clothing. At first I was going to give her a long-sleeved shirt with a deep v-neck and some blue skinny-jeans. But then I realized that that wasn’t bitchy enough. (And I also consulted some actual females about what middle-school girls wear, and they all seemed to agree on one look:)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand yea! And then I rigged her, and now here you have it! A mean girl.

And before anyone goes ape-shit about the colors, let me say that THESE ARE NOT THE FINAL COLORS. Of anything, really. I mean the final version will probably be like this, but nothing is certain. Her clothing colors will most certainly change, and her lip-stick will become a lighter pink, and her rouge will be toned down a lot (because she still looks a little too mature with that makeup) (I won’t tone down the mascara though, because according to my lady-friends, Middle School is when women go Hard As a Motherfucker with the eyeliner and mascara, so there), but this is what her body is gonna be like.

Also, just as an extra fun image, this is a screencap I took while I was weight-painting her head:

Looks like a shitty iPod commercial, right? Hahaaaa.

OK. Anyway, yea. I figured it would be cool to compile the entire history of this character from step Zero to Finished Product, and it’s really exciting to me that I can create an awesome fucking animated character literally just from my imagination. This is definitely an extremely satisfying accomplishment for me, artistically speaking, and it also gives me confidence that in the future if I want to keep making independent animated films, I still can, with zero budget! 🙂

But yea. As usual, though, it’s 3:30AM right now as I post this, and I’m treating this blog like it’s my fucking diary, so I think it’s time for me to turn on my night music and go to sleep. G’night y’all! I can’t wait to animate this girl!

Peace. (and there’s more to come, of course!)

– Max