Final Robot Animation

I think I’m done?

Storyboard

Here is my hand drawn storyboard outlining the basic story and some camera direction. I will follow this quite closely when creating my animation and may even break some bits down a bit further in order to plan out the actions clearer for me to animate in 3ds max.

Completed Robot!

Time to start my storyboard and then the animation as my robot is fully rigged and finished!

Building my Robot in 3ds Max

I started creating my robot in 3ds max using the sketches I had. Starting with the foot, I used the tutorial sheets as reference so that each of the sections of my robot were similar to the basic robot so I could rig it up easily.

I started adding materials to test out the type of colours, glossiness etc I would want. I knew that I wanted the shoes to be a shiny red so I worked around there to experiment with materials.

I made the stripey top and wrapped an image around it but for some reason it wouldn’t line up exactly right . I then did it manually to overcome this.

Robot Character

I started off with the basic robot from the seminars and looked at the shapes and segments so I could alter these and make my own robot.

I decided to keep the robot quite simple but to give it some key features which made it my own robot and give it a bit of a personality. I’m hoping to create a very similar model to my sketches and hopefully the segments will work so I can rig it up in the same way as the robot above.

Animation Ideas

I brainstormed ideas for my animation and what can happen in it. I wanted to have a little story behind it in order to make it a bit more interesting, which is why I have been looking into Tom and Jerry.

I will follow this up with a storyboard of my animation breaking it down to the key frames.

Walking Robot!

In the seminar yesterday I created my first test for a walking robot. I’m quite pleased with my walk as it’s reasonably simple with a bit of a head bob to make it a bit more fun.

http://www.youtube.com/v/igvmoEyWScU&hl=en_GB&fs=1&

This method involves creating a walk cycle which is very simple as I only created a step with each foot and then repeated it. The robot is walking on the spot and I used the triangle pointers under it’s feet to help me with steps and lining up where the feet should go. I thought this was very simple and am looking forward to applying this to my animation project.

Looking at Tom and Jerry

I have decided to draw inspiration from Tom and Jerry for my animation. I want to give both the characters of the robot and banana a personality and have a rivalry between them. I want my animation to reflect their personality in the way they walk etc. Here is a brainstorm of things I have noticed from Tom and Jerry in general.

I watched an episode of Tom and Jerry called ‘Pent-House Mouse’ and have made comments evaluating what happened in the episode and how it occurred. I will think about what techniques I can use from this and decide on a story to create in my animation.

Initial Ideas for Robot Slipping on a Banana Peel Animation

Here are my initial thoughts of the ‘Of Bots and Bananas’ project. I will be creating a more detailed brainstorm of ideas, developing/ adding to these thoughts. In these sketches I was mostly thinking about the characters but when I spoke to Andy he said the most important aspect of the project was the animation and not the characters. Because of this I have decided to concentrate for a bit on animation techniques, practising the seminar work I have done with him and the basic storyline.