Creature Design for Short Film

[Elvinsiew]

Hi all,
I'm currently working on designing a creature for an animated short film.
Story explores the relationship between father and son monsters as they wreck a city.

I'm new to this forum and I would be eternally grateful for some criticism and comments :) Be as blunt as you want to! Here are some of the development work for the father monster. After sketching various thumbnails my friend and I decided to iterate on this design.

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Loose concept painting by Ben.

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Quick concept sculpt base on line concept. Was toying with the idea of claw hands instead of "gorilla look"

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Loose concept painting to composite into scene.

[PascalR]

:welcome:Elvinsiew!
I really like your 2d artworks, the first one has a lot angled shapes which really work in 2d. Are you planning on keeping a cartoonish style in 3d?
It would be nice to see a 3d version of the first design in 3d with this sharp and dynamic silhouette.
Beautiful colors , the lighting in the 3rd one is really cool too ,keep the updates coming!:thumbsup:


Cheers

P.

[Elvinsiew]

Thanks PascalR, the final film will be definitely in 3d. However style wise not too sure how blocky the character would be. What Ben an I have agreed on is to achieve a impressionistic approach to textures and overall rendering, like the colour study (but with finer details :P)

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(more stills on page)
Reference :http://www.urs-film.com/

Not sure if the angled look will work but will work on a sculpt right now. If you have references would be greatly appreciated. Hoping to learn from everyone here ! :notWorthy: :notWorthy:

[Elvinsiew]

Re-sculpted the creature to be more angular to the 2D.
Quite a challenge to imagine muscle mass as angular forms :banghead:


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[PascalR]

Re-sculpted the creature to be more angular to the 2D.
Quite a challenge to imagine muscle mass as angular forms :banghead:


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It's all about planes anyways :)
http://www.freedomofteach.com/products/artist_busts/bust_flesh_torso

Have a look at the video as well, very cool stuff there.

You can check out the reference thread in the cg blah blah section as well, tons of cool references.
Cool update btw, the belly crease seems a bit off to me, I would suggest going back to the gorilla anatomy for muscle definition.

Keep it up:dance:

Cheers

Pascal

[Elvinsiew]

Thanks PascalR. Will work on it more tomorrow. Hopefully can upload paint overs by friday. :notWorthy:

[phoenix]

Elvinsiew i really like the first paint its a nice, like the colors and form. love to see how it progresses.


Regards

[bneall]

really nice paintings. I would suggest maybe working with your character in a lower resolution in 3d at first, and build it up.

[Elvinsiew]

Thanks for the feedback guys! really made me rethink and strengthen the design.
Here are some Expressions studies, Not sure how to push the emotion more. Comments are always welcome
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Junior~ the monster's son. Contrary to his Dad, he does not like destroying things, rather creating things from rubble. (think Wall-E)

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Once again be as blunt as you can! My Colleague and I want to learn as much as possible from you fellow artists :) :notWorthy:

[Elvinsiew]

Some more studies.
Here is a 2D run cycle test for the child
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Here is a 2D animation test of the child.
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Some relational studies with regards to the father and child overall silhouette.
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Modelling the father to get a better cage topology :) Good call Bneall :beerchug:
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To all who have been following and commenting Cheers to you! Thanks for the encouragement! Hope to learn more through this production :thumbsup:

[GregStrangis]

This is looking like a awesome project Elvinsview!! The painting of the father and his son are wonderful. Would be great to see those textures translated over to the 3D. Good luck! Will keep a eye on this thread.

[PascalR]

Great studies and paintingsclap
That mouth is going to be a challenge facial expressions wise ;)
Love the 2d animations you're doing:dance:
Keep it up!

[Elvinsiew]

Please advise on the facial expressions :) according to the design. The eyes and upper lip are fleshy, the chin and fore head are calcified (hard).

Any suggestions how to push the expressions? There will be no dialogue in the short so my colleague Ben will have to convey the bond between them with gestures and expressions. How did the aliens (prawns) in district 9 convey emotion when they only had eyes and gestures to animate with.

Any suggestions could be really helpful.clap

[PascalR]

I think I would do a low rez version of the head and see how the mouth opening would work, where to put the pivot, where the mouth corner should be,etc... It will give you a better idea of the mechanics of this jaw and mouth.
Having a very low rez version makes it very easy and quick to do temp blendshapes I reckon.
Having hard aeras is cool, as long as you know where they can split or rotate (see transformers facials). I would assign a different color to the rigid parts on your model when doing the facial expressions so you know where you have to retain the rigid volumes and where the skin can stretch (soft tissues).

Good luck! :D

P.

[Elvinsiew]

thanks pascal!
Will take your advise and do some tests. :) Now working on a paint over for the creature.
:dance:

[Elvinsiew]

Some primary studies, concept painting and corrected proportions of Junior.
Based on a concept speed sculpt to find proportions in 3d. Linework and painting done by Ben.
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[ianucci]

Thanks for sharing, very nice work. I like the new gentler looking version of monster jnr.

Your comment about the impressionistic style and the angular character also made me think of burning safari, if you've not seen it... http://www.burningsafari.com/movie.htm

[weiluntsai]

I like what you do and processing, really good sketch and workflow
give us more:bouncy::bouncy:

[Elvinsiew]

Yes! Thanks ianucci! Watched Burning Safari a while back. Another source of inspiration is http://www.siggjones.com/, organic yet angular designs. The challenging part for my part will be getting the light to fall off correctly off the angular bevel edges and for deformations to keep the angular look.

http://sneakernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/sigg-jones-interview-14.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_iZDPgJxSKIM/SwrHyvvHeOI/AAAAAAAAAvg/VXfUz_F4eU4/s1600/01.jpg

[Intervain]

really cool character designs - keep'em coming!

[Elvinsiew]

Some polished pre-production documents.
Character Sheets for the 2 creatures :)
Poses Designed and compiled by Ben! :thumbsup:
keep the comments coming!:beerchug:

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[PascalR]

Great paintings, I dig the baby monster grabbing his dad's horns :)
I think it might help you to do a detailed design for the dad's face, in order to define clearly where the soft tissues start and where the more rigid parts do. This will make things easier for facial expressions and detailing in 3d.

Great work guys!

Cheers

P.

[Elvinsiew]

Hi guys, here's an update. Been working on the blend shapes and rigging.
Today was quite excited to test the shader and texture look. I was trying to get a painterly feel to fit with the initial concept art, with the daubs and texture of an oil painting. It took some R&D to get brush strokes into the shadows as well to make it look more like a painting. In the end I used a ramp shader to drive an ambient "brushstrokes" into the shadows only. Thanks ot Hillary for the advice on the shading network.

Base model for paint over
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Paintover for projection
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Shading Network
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Projection Render with bump
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Final Render with lighting and shadow.
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Comments wanted Thanks :)

[PascalR]

Cool render! very painterly, is this going to work when animated? I guess you will need a few more projections for that.

One note regarding the model, I think if you go low poly you need to simplify the silhouette as in the artwork. It would make the silhouette a lot more dynamic especially on arms and horns. Right now it feels more like level0 of high rez mesh instead of a stylized model.
Hope it makes sense.

Cheers

Pascal

[Elvinsiew]

thanks Pascal. THe projection is a test. Will bake it to Uvs and then poly paint in with details. :)

Im just afraid of deformation problems when animating if the mesh is too low res. Right now the deformations are just right after rigging. Any lower and The muscles might not deform properly. I was thinking of shot sculpting to get better silhouettes if needed.

It might be just me. Fighting myself to break away from "realism".:banghead:

[Elvinsiew]

Hey guys, its been a while since u last heard from me. Here is what we have been up to! Here are some of the final renders of the father and junior! After researching various stylization techniques, This is the final painterly render for the animated short! No fancy shader work. Really enjoyed hand painting the colour and bump map . Going to play around with a spec map but not sure how to get a rhino/elephant kind of specular. Suggestions?
Cheers to all the great work here! clap:beerchug:
Videos coming soon...

Test renders:
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Painterly Strokes filter to render in Photoshop
Junior
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Father
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[Elvinsiew]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNFN2MC9QSU

a run and walk cycle of Monster Dad

(http://www.youtube.com/watch#%21v=2I3UclJ76y4)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I3UclJ76y4

a sequence of shots for the short film!

[PascalR]

Great work, I prefer the photoshop effect verion than the glowy renders though. Very cool to see your characters animated :) Thanks for sharing!

[weiluntsai]

thanks for sharing this. animation looking pretty great. I prefer photoshop also. nice work , dude.