Feather tests

Been trying out feathers in maya. I made them using paint effects converted to polygons which are attached to an nhair system(or using this tutorial on youtube; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXVRGC15gtQ)

The feathers look dull because I haven't sorted out the specular maps yet.











Here's my testing, the last two I was trying to make the feathers stand on end, did this by keyframing gravity.

Boards for sizzle reel

Just for my own personal organisation, its useful to have all the boards together for quick reference

Sizzle reel animatic

Have created a sizzle reel animatic that contains the centre of my film. I still need to tinker with the timing a bit as the start goes too fast in some areas. It is just under 3 minutes long but I can always cut out the first scene because while it is interesting, it still probably isn't as interesting as the dragon scenes.

I'm thinking that that will be my back up plan if I find that I can't get the full 3 minutes done. This is good because it means I'll have certain scenes as a priority. I'll get the prioritised scenes done and if I still have time then I'll start on the other scenes. If by some miracle I get both done on time then I can start making the rest of the assets for the film(Unlikely)

After finalising the timing of the animatic I'll go on to shot breakdowns and asset lists. I still need to make myself a schedule too, I want to give myself 3 or 4 weeks just for the rendering which means I'll have to move fast

What I'm up to now as well as old work

Currently I'm drawing up orthographics for all the characters for later modelling, I'll be done with that today. Otherwise I'm going to decide what scene's I'm using for my sizzle reel. Once I do that I'm going to make a list of assets I have to make. Once that's done I think I'll start modelling those assets but at the same time I will also start breaking down the rest of the shots, giving them numbers and names and asset lists so that everything will be prepared for next year when I animate the rest of the film.

Here's old work when I was trying to work out the design for phoebe

Early dragon concept drawings

Found some of the early doodles that turned into the dragon character. They were on my media culture notes. Originally the dragon was going to have wings at its head behind it's jawbone.

Thumbnails

These were some of the very first things that I did when working on the 3rd year project. They are mostly only legible to myself as they were purely just to create an animatic to find out how long my project was going to be.

Birds

There are several birds featured in my animation, I'm using a combination of native and exotic birds;