Today was the first time I’ve seen the creature take a real turn in development, I’ve seen brief glimpses of Josh modelling it over the weeks but today was a real eye opener Here are some stills below, Just hoping to get the rig soon as we are literally down to last 3 weeks, which doesn’t give me much time. 😦 Looking great though Josh!
This project I am really looking forward to get stuck into, having working with Josh last year for literally a week or so at the very last minute after another project feel through for the both of us. we had fun producing a piece of work that turned out quite well considering the time we had. Here’s the short below, the raptor animation is near the end.
Seeing what we were capable of for the last project Josh had another idea for a short, so with a group of other third years from vfx department and other animators and modellers we aim to produce a sequence where we see a humanoid being pursued by a wild alien beast down a futuristic corridor. Josh has named it Earthkind. It’s shaping up to be quite some fun.
Starting off Josh pretty much said he was open to ideas for the creature as long as it’s mean and powerful. So starting off I looked at so many different examples of creatures, slender builds, stocky, fat, powerful,muscly, scaly, horned and spiked…. you name it I looked at everything. There was so much variety out there I was spoilt for choice.
Some great looking creatures on this page and after many discussions and lots of thoughts Josh wanted something almost rhino build, unstoppable in it’s charge.
What was really a turning point in the design was influenced by the creature in the bottom right hand corner of the page, it’s mouth seem to unfold. I suggested to Josh maybe our creature could do the same. So the next step from here was incorporating that style jaw/mouth.
He are some of the essential traits that josh said he’d like to be incorporated into the design at this stage. It is an interesting mix to say the least, but a challenge I look forward to 🙂
Above some very basic creatures, just looking at the hump style back at this point.
Some quick sketches investigating the opening of the mouth above and below, I kind of liked the idea of the jaw unfolding top and bottom splaying out to the sides also, revealing this huge tongue. Also a look at the eyes, three on each side much like the spider I used for reference. the teeth were abandoned as being walrus/hippo like.
Some more sketches mainly concentrating on the head and it’s shape.
A bit finer in detail on the two heads above, looking at two options for Josh to look at. I was hoping to put a contrast between the two so he could make a decision going forward. Out of personal choice I preferred the one to the left, just seemed more menacing to me.
Reaching the final stages of the design I thought it would be wise to look at the anatomy of the suggested animals by josh, just to a feel for it being anatomically correct to a degree. Also to help josh when it came to sculpting, he could overlay the sketch and realise where the form would be raised or bulged to to muscle form.
Getting somewhere close with the creature bottom right, however Josh wanted to lose the hair as this would be another pain in the neck as far as animating etc.
Above and below the final shape we were going for, although far from being finished it gave Josh enough to go from. I left the muscle forms in hard lines so josh could use for sculpting. Below a few action poses our creature is likely to perform as it powers down the corridor after it’s prey. Overall I’m quite happy with the design although I’d like to have spent far more time on it, shading colouring it etc.
I having been looking at various videos on the movement of Hyenas, just to see if I can incorporate a similar movement in the chase scene in the corridor, the last part of this video is good for run cycle reference.
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