Pork Chops and Apple Sauce

I'm currently creating the hair for my gnome. The eyebrows are able to move, I created blend shapes for each brow shape so they will match all of the movements of the brow area (as described in Jason Osipa's book). The beard is a work in progress. I was playing around with different types of brushes and then started painting the paint effects on and I created a "chop" by mere coincidence...thus, I had to create a pair of "chops" 'cause they make my gnome look so cool. I'll probably ditch the chops...but I was testing out the particular brush settings...I like how the chops look so I'll probably use that brush to create the entire beard. For now the beard can't move with the blend shapes...eventually I'll probably use wrap deformers to do that. I am hoping to set up some kind of small control system to allow me to shift the hair around a tiny bit. Once the beard is complete I'll move on to creating the hair on his head.

-john

"Debil and Mobicky"

The following are two images I created yesterday...I decided to go through my sketchbook and take a few images further...these were two sketches I did somewhere around 8 months ago...oh and MATT...Mobicky has an odd resemblance to your character...I don't know how that happened...but I did sketch this guy awhile back...and didn't realize the resemblance until I was putting the character definition on the page....Mobicky is the sickly looking whale and Debil is the dumb little horned creature.


With that I built all of my blend shapes for my Gnome...and am now testing their compatibility. Most of the shapes work pretty well together...but these are still WORKS IN PROGRESS...I will be creating more blends to correct some of the shapes not working well together...mainly in the brow area...some of the brow shows are causing sharp angles and causing the skin to penetrate the skull. Here are a few shapes though that I got after playing with the blends...my favorite is probably the Grampa face. This aren't complete looking either...because the lids do not close yet...the expressions will look better once the eyelids are able to move with the expression the character is making. And another thing that will add a lot to the expressions is when he will have eyebrows...those should be coming soon too...once all the blends work well together...I can connect my rig I created for him.

Happy Late Halloween

So it's been awhile...lots of good stuff going on...more on that later. Anyway I thought I'd post some pics.
First off, I've been creating the blend shapes for my Gnome (For those that don't know 3d stuff...I'm basically starting to create facial shapes that will later combine with multiple shapes to make different emotions and allow my Gnome to speak).
Here are a few pics of some of those blends (These are merely for the mouth...there will be many more for the brows, nose and such that will all combine to make more complete expressions...just seeing the mouth might look odd).



Outside of the Gnome work...these next two images are the result of about 20-30 sketches of possible establishing shots for the intro of my next film...these were the two out of 7 large sketches that I chose...I'm thinking I'll probably pick the one with the waterfall in the background...again these are just sketches...I'm sure I'll change these around a little and add more depth and fix perspectives and such.


With that, I've also made changes to my gnomes cane. Before I had beads that hung from the top down to the handle....I looked at that for a while and didn't like it...I actually liked the sticks that twist around the bottom and wanted to mimic that element...I've crated two exhaust/tubes that will animate when the Gnome smokes from his pipe and smoke will come out of the bottom of the tubes.



That's it for now...comments are welcome...I'll post again...sooner than later this time.

-john