Author: MsLilWallflower

Tips and Tricks for Beginners: 3D Character Modeling in MODO 902

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So I’ve recently completed a self initiated project to model a cartoonish character in Modo from scratch and move on to rigging and animating. It’s the first time I have attempted this and I would like to share my process as well as the research that I’ve done to learn by just YouTube-ing and Googling tutorials.

I hope it would be useful and encouraging for anyone who’d to like make a start in animating. Often we know the basics of tools but do not think we have what is necessary to make the jump to just doing it. But really it’s the starting that is the hardest, so I hope this video and the research I’ve done would give people the extra push they need to create!

Here is the link to downloading the resources, tutorials and notes I have made: https://drive.google.com/open?id=17uR4z5cGgIs1FQaBbXTLDbhKubUjr0pK

My Creative Weekly Routine Through Process

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I think the problem with me is that I am a generalist. In particular with visual creatives, a lot of platforms interest me. That would mean I’d be the jack of all trades and master of none so to speak! How then shall I progress in the working world!? I haven’t quite figured that out. For the moment I’ve decided to try to make a more focused approach in sharpening my skills. Although it is still quite widespread I aim to improve through step by step exercises.

I have categorized areas for learning and how I would achieve it throughout the week.

Categories for learning:

  • 2D Animation
  • Motion Graphics
  • Typography
  • Concept Art
  • 3D Modelling

Weekly List (What, How, When):

Short Creative Exercises (SCE) – YouTube – Tuesday and Friday

Documentation – Blog – Saturday

Forefront Research – Blog – Monday Fortnightly

Making and Learning Process:

  1. YouTube a Creative Tutorial
    • Extra Research (other sources)
  2. Replicate!
  3. Create!

To sum up, how I am currently learning is through online tutorials. After watching them I replicate, and then use the techniques learned to create! Personally, the tutorials being quite varied helps keep things fresh.

Typography Word: Wisdom | Creative Timelapse

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Hey guys! It’s my first time learning and playing around with typography. Still trying to get used to Illustrator.. one of my weakest Adobe Suite skills. Although there’s a lot of software I haven’t tried!

It was fun experimenting and refining typographically! The great tutorial source I am learning from is Skillshare, one of the tutors Dylan Mierzwinski. The link to it is:

https://www.skillshare.com/classes/Monoline-Lettering-From-Sketch-to-Screen/478659652?via=user-profile

A Little Research on VR

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There’s a lot of excitement in the VR industry. There’s still so much room for it to grow, but over the past decade or so it has certainly made concrete progress that is enabling more and more users to experience these realities. I came across the ‘Wolves in the Walls‘, which is a new VR short film based on a bed time story book. The industry is still trying to grasp best ways in which to portray storytelling and narrative. That led me to researching where VR is as of today within the recent year.

Another VR short film I have come across gave an interesting experience titled ‘The Invisible Man‘. In order to highlight certain queues that are important to understanding where the story is going, faces are enlarged to highlight the emotions of characters. Or even placement of objects that hint to the development of the scene is slightly blown up. This presents possible methods of storytelling in VR. I still think personally it could be portrayed in a better way but for now it gets the point across.

Layers of Experience

Phil Kauffold discusses various possibilities of how VR is being used for society. There are a growing number of categories. Such involve being placed in different locations to increase in understanding of a particular situation. Being immersed in an active war zone (I.e. the first VR documentary The Fight for Falluja) or to see what circumstances refugees are facing. Other layers include medical procedures, calming patients, treating PTSD (as funded by military), recreating history, games, film and so much more. Each comes with sensitive issues and repercussions to bear in mind.

One striking thing about VR that Catherine Allen mentioned from her TED talk is that

VR something that I did rather than something I observed!

Especially in the field of learning it is far more effective to grow in application rather than mere theoretical observation.

Changes in our World

I am certainly excited to see the experiments and gradual integration of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in our society. It’s a scary but thrilling thing! May we handle such technology with responsibility through increasing our awareness of negative implications.

Resources:

Dog Running Cycle Process Part 2

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The video contains sampled aspects of remaining part of the working process.

I want to make bullet notes that are easy to digest regarding the process:

  • First came the research and references (the one below is a very good example that I hope to take forward at a later stage)
  • The second stage is extracting the key frames to produce the rough animation
  • Third stage is filling inbetweens
  • Fourth stage is the clean up (actually in hindsight I see that it is possible to perhaps use this stage for some of the inbetweens to save time)
  • Fifth stage is the colour. Layers here are important so that we can turn off the black outline to produce a different stylistic approach
  • Sixth stage is thinking about highlights to adapt in After Effects
  • Seventh stage is creating the environment the dog will be running in
  • Finally is compositing everything in After Effects

Hopefully some day I will be ready to make tutorials! But I think for now I just want to gather resources and focus on producing the work. The work that then I can share with people in more depth in the future.