12 Principles of Animation

Stretch/squash, and anticipation: for when the duck launches himself off the plank at the end of the clip.



Secondary action: for the slightly-floppy mice ears:


and possibly for the cloth if I have time



Staging:
Hopefully will be clear what this is:





Exaggeration:

The duck will be very suprised/shocked when the mice mutiny.



Arcing:

Candy jar!

Threw together a physics sim to drop a pile of gumballs into my candy jar. Lighting definitely needs work, but I'm not focusing on that yet, I just wanted to get some balls in the jar and not having them intersecting the walls or each other!

Duck - Start

Mostly I worked on inorganic models this morning, and then made the duck this evening. The duck needs some clothing and a bit more detail refinements, but is coming along!

Just for laughs I painted on some vertex colours and through on a texture to give it some roughness. Still naked, but now colourful!

The mouse has a body

Well it's definitely not finished and will probably need a lot of refining (as well as more colouring and texturing), but here is my very first character model ever! I was hoping to have more done to show tomorrow, but this will have to do as a start!

The first character

Here is the beginning of my very first character model ever. I have to work all day tomorrow so I wanted to try and get as much done tonight as possible, which is unfortunately just a head. However, I'm pretty pleased with it, as the first attempt at head. I'm thinking it looks a bit less ratty and a bit more mousey than my concept art. Following a friend's suggestion, I shortened the teeth quite a bit, which helps in the un-ratification of the character.

Character concept art

Largest version

At first, the duck I drew in my storyboard looked a bit too much like Daffy Duck for my liking. Essentially, it was Daffy in a naval uniform. So, to get away from that, I drew him slightly differently, and coloured him like a mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos), with a green head. Unlike the mallard, who is typically white at the breast and tan below, I coloured my duck tan at the breast and white below to mirror the typical late 18th/early 19th century Royal Navy uniform.

During the brainstorming session, it was suggested to possibly make him overweight, as a result of hoarding and eating all the candy. However, I'm thinking that instead of being a greedy, selfish captain, he is one of moderation. He lets the mice have their daily 'tot' of candy, but no more. I also imagine him as not very experienced, and a definite rule-follower, which antagonizes his crew of mice.

Largest version

The mice in the original story board had much rounder faces than this one here. I am not entirely satisfied with this drawing, as I believe it looks more like a rat than a mouse. I'm not entirely sure how to make it more "mouse-like" at this point, other than making his face less pointed. I will have to play with this when I go to model the head.
The clothing is not entirely period correct, but he is clearly recognizable as a lower-class sailor, in contrast to the very formal uniform worn by the duck captain.

The two two other mice will be similar, but different. They should all have the same similar form but I plan to modify them slightly, making one a bit heavier, and changing some details, such as the nick in this mouse's ear, and the tattoo. Perhaps I'll make one mouse have a cut-off tail.

Storyboard

Here's my initial storyboard for 'I Saw a Ship a Sailing.' As you can see, I modified the rhyme to include a bit of a plot. The Captain is keeping all the comfits (candy) in his cabin, denying it to all the mice sailors, who are forced to subside on apples only. So they mutiny, break into the cabin and force the captain to walk the plank!

First lab complete

Well, it might not look like much, but that is the results of my first Maya lab. To be honest, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by Maya at the moment. It's not terribly difficult, and a lot of the fundamentals are the same as Blender or Rhino, but of course all of the keyboard shortcuts are completely different (why is 'Scale' and R, Maya? What the hell!? Is it so hard to make R the command for Rotate? And maybe S for scale?!). So it'll be a steep learning curve, learning how to do everything in Maya that I can in Blender. However, I managed to figure out putting a comple of lights and a camera in Maya without looking anything up, so that wasn't too hard.

At home I started messing around in Blender, trying to create a duck character for a captain. I started with the feet and made my way up to the neck yesterday. Nothing really worth posting yet, and I'll have to replicate it in Maya anyway so I might as well learn how to manipulate vertices, edges, control points and whatnot in Maya, and learn how to extrude and whatnot. I should also probably try to learn the sculpt tools in Maya as soon as possible.

I saw a ship a-sailing

This blog follows the trials and tribulations of an archaeology student trying to muddle his way through a graduate-level Visualization course on 3D Modelling and Animation at Texas A&M University. Throughout the coming months, this blog will detail the step-by-step process of creating a 30-second animation inspired by the nursery rhyme 'I saw a ship a-sailing.'

I saw a ship a-sailing,
A-sailing on the sea;
And oh, it was all laden
With pretty things for thee!

There were comfits in the cabin,
And apples in the hold;
The sails were made of silk,
And the masts were made of gold.

The four and twenty sailors,
That stood between the decks,
Were four and twenty white mice,
With chains about their necks.

The captain was a duck,
With a packet on his back;
And when the ship began to move,
The captain said, "Quack, Quack!"