The Whistler’s Beginning

For one of my major projects this year I thought I’d attempt to complete a little idea I’ve had for some time now. The idea is about a character based on a song I heard as a young lad called “The Whistler” Performed by Jethro Tull. The idea was to be set in medieval times, a bard/minstrel who travels from town to town getting into various mischief along the way. On his travels he meets a small creature, who decides to tag along and play and perform as a duet with the Whistler. I intend to make this project as if it were an opening sequence to a small animated cartoon, I’m aiming for it to be no more than a minute and a half in total. I will be working with two other members of my year, Jack Elliott, Animation, Lukas Bilek, Modelling/Rigging and Bek Rootes, Environment/Modeller.

Who is Jethro Tull?
Jethro Tull are a British progressive rock group. Their music is characterised by the vocals, acoustic guitar, and flute playing of Ian Anderson, who has led the band since its founding, and the guitar work of Martin Barre, who has been with the band since 1969, after he replaced original guitarist Mick Abrahams. Formed in Luton, Bedfordshire, in December 1967 initially playing experimental blues rock, they later incorporated elements of classical music, folk music, jazz, hard rock and art rock into their music.  During a career that has spanned more than forty years, Jethro Tull have sold more than 60 million albums worldwide.

Ian Anderson as Jethro Tull lends himself to the minstrel look in this picture.

The video above is Jethro Tull in all their glory, just look at some of his expressions, fantasic!

So now I have the basis for an idea so as with any project I begin, I start by looking for existing reference, looking at films, books, the web, whatever I can lay my hands on. I quite often find myself collecting cuttings or pictures that have references to things I might need in the future.

 

I wanted to keep the character quite simple for the purposes of animation, the more detail I ploughed into the design could hinder the process of the movement. So when referencing bards/minstrels I wanted to look for a simple style costume that could be easy to model and rig.

As the little note says above initially I’d intended to have three characters within this little sketch, but with time constraints and requiring other people to animate and rig, model etc I felt I’d be biting off more than I could chew. I had written an in-depth back story for the ‘Whistler’ and how he came to be on the run and meeting his two colleges, even to the point I created a number of calling cards he would leave as he escaped his pursuers. The Bigger of the two characters would carry his little companion, and would be the general muscle of the group.

Thinking about the ‘Whistlers’ look, I had in mind him being quite an old character at first, with experience and wisdom driving his character, but then I began to think of characters I could relate to his actions on screen. Errol Flynn was someone who I had in mind, often appearing in swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films.

Storyboards & LAV’s

Here is the first stage of the opening sequence some fast thumbs giving me the breakdown and description of the various frames, nothing to complicated at this stage as the chances are things might change as the storyline develops.

Here was the second stage of storyboards before I went on to shooting the LAV’s (Live action videos) Above is the first 10-15 seconds of the opening sequence as we are first introduced to the ‘Whistler’.

The next stage and probably my favourite when thinking about creating an animation, and that’s the LAV reference prior to animation. In the above footage I thank my brother for being a huge sport and representing ‘The Whistler’ as reference. Ipad at the ready we filmed what seemed hundreds of these in order to get different approaches. This is only a clip from the final video but it gives you an indication of how it progressed from the storyboards.

Return of the MAC

For a personal project of mine I thought I’d pay homage to a friend of mine that became quite the star after he retired from the SAS. John Thomas “Mac” McAleese MM (25 April 1949 – 26 August 2011) was a British Army soldier who led an SAS team which stormed the Iranian embassy in London in May 1980 to end the Iranian Embassy siege (Operation Nimrod). He became known for retelling his story on TV and for taking part in the reality show SAS: Are You Tough Enough?.

McAleese was born in Stirling and grew up in Laurieston, Stirlingshire. He joined 59 Independent Commando, Royal Engineers, in 1969, aged 20. He moved to Hereford in 1975 after being accepted by the SAS. He was a lance corporal in 1980, serving in Pagoda Troop, B Squadron, 22 SAS Regiment, when he was famously seen with members of his team – Blue Team – on live television placing an explosive charge on the front first floor balcony of the Iranian Embassy prior to the assault on 5 May 1980.

McAleese later took part in the Falklands War in 1982, and was awarded the Military Medal in 1988 for service in Northern Ireland. He also served as a bodyguard for three British prime ministers. He was honourably discharged from the British Army on 8 February 1992 in the rank of staff sergeant. After that, he worked as a security consultant in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was also an airsoft instructor.

For this project I aim to create a new character for the very popular game team fortress 2, their are several classes in the game and I thought having known MAC personally what better than to place him into a his very own class within the game. He will be called the SPECIAL…ie in reference to the SAS.
I will collaborating on this project with Megan who is CG Artist from my year. She will be responsible for the modelling of MAC and when this is finished I will begin to rig, skin then animate various game animations.

I started my research by investigating what the SAS were all about, my personal memory and first time I can remember even hearing of the SAS was back in  April 1980 from 30th April to 5th May. These black figures appeared from nowhere as the public watched live on tv.

Above is John from various programs he featured in on TV. These are good purely for reference material for when getting the similarity needed in the sketch. However I’m not looking to make him entirely the same, more of a stylised version of him.

Obviously if I’m to get things entirely accurate then besides studying the man we need to look at the equipment and gear the SAS are renowned for using. Above are various SAS soldiers in slight variations in gear. I’ve forwarded some of this information to Meg as she will be needing it for modelling purposes.

Here we see the various weapons the SAS use, starting from the top left we see flash-bangs, grenades, MP5 Sub Machine Gun, The C8 Carbine, Sig Sauer P226 Pistol. All these and more are things that Meg and I will have to consider.

Here is a little bit of info on the game our MAC character would feature. Team Fortress 2 like its predecessors,  is focused around two opposing teams, Reliable Excavation & Demolition (RED) and Builders League United (BLU) competing for a combat-based principal objective. Players can choose to play as one of nine character classes in these teams, each with his own unique strengths, weaknesses, and weapons. Although the abilities of a number of classes have changed from earlier Team Fortress incarnations, the basic elements of each class have remained, that being one primary weapon, one secondary weapon, and one melee weapon. The game was released with six official maps, although 44 extra maps, 9 arena maps, 8 king of the hill maps, and various other map types have been included in subsequent updates. In addition, a number of community assembled maps have been released. When players join a level for the first time, an introductory video shows how to complete its objectives. Here’s a video for those who have not heard of TF2, this is an example of the Heavy Character.

So now the concepting had started and getting a likeness was my main objective but with a style about it. Starting off with realistic proportions then exaggerating the jaw could possibly be an interesting approach.

Looking at body shape was also a little tricky, especially as this character had to fit in the world of TF2. So proportions had to match and style. I noticed almost all the characters within the game have quite large hands, so this was something I needed to include. Also although the characters looked detailed in the game at closer inspection their isn’t that much detail at all. So not over complicating it was key also.

As the above comment explain on the design sheet, not entirely happy with the look but will do my best to adjust it to similar style.

Some possible faces our Mac might pull, however depending on time, rigging the face might be left out as this project is mainly body mechanics for a game, so see how time figures.

Finally here are some poses we will likely see MAC perform, I plan to have a walk cycle, shooting various weapons, throwing grenades, and possibly a death or being shot scene.