A four week long project in which I make a short animation using 3d software tools.

Week 1

To come up with multiple drawings and decide which idea has more vision. Seeing as I havent made a bipedal and props in a long time, I wanted to go with the cat and fish, while other ideas were to be for future projects. First week is dedicated to drawig the idea and references in ibisPaint X, then import those into Zbrush for sculpting.

Initial drawing out of the many ideas
Hi-poly sculpt of initial characters and props

Week 2

Second week is dedicated to lowering polygon count for animation. Also to UV the low-poly models and import all texture sets to ibisPaint X for texturing. This was also before I discovered Substance Painter. So what I did was import uvs into Zbrush first, paint the color patterns, export the sets as images, find images online them put them on top of the textures in ibisPaint X, then bring the finalized textures into Maya.

Low-poly sculpt of initial characters and props

Week 3

This step was the most painful to go through, as I also had to think carefully as how objects would move through the scene. Ive discovered a little bit of Lattices, which is a deformer used to make objects appear liquid. Also I didnt have to do much weight painting in comparison to Lil’ Big, but Ive learned some tricks to ease through the long pain. And with preparations finished, it was time for the show!

Week 4

The making of the animation was interesting, because at the time, constraining the banjo to Lil’ Big’s hands was odd at first. There was also a time during it when the lattice controls disappeared, and thus the water never came out when the tadpole jumps. I wish I couldve done more with Lil’ Big like have him do actions while performing with the guitar. There’s also wanting more time with the rendering, but rendering one frame took more time, so it was removed, but the only part I wanted to add was two spotlights flying over the stage as they’re playing, and adding a transparent image of a crowd in the front to liven the scene. All these changes to be implemented but couldnt because I wanted to know how much I could do in under a week, and I’ll accept the result as is. Perhaps I’ll come back to this project some day…

Getting the sound to work was the easy part, but it was also the hardest. Things are really quiet, but at the 35-second interval is when the video gets loud, and I apologize in advance.

Thank you for reading!

“Cat Dance” and “Lil’Big’s Encore” project details soon!