Final editing

I rendered the animation along with the soundtrack but wanted to add some snoring sounds to the start. To do this I attempted to open the file in Adobe Premiere Pro but it reported a generic fault. There was also a fast nod of the jelly baby's head at the start of the animation, however on checking the animation through the timeline in 3DS max I could note no anomalies.

How does this character relate to its viewers?

This character links well to the younger audience by providing simple easy to follow dance moves and as such creating a fun way to exercise. The character also sings some phonics in the song, which would be a great way in which children could learn; especially if the phonic word should be placed on the screen at the same time as the singing of them enabling the child to interact with auditory and visual stimuli.

Traditionally there are 6 jelly babies, each of a differerent colour. This means that a complete unit could be made up each with a different personality type and ways of interacting with each other, thereby showing different dynamics.

Finishing touches

I added a blink cycle and a wink to the jelly baby as it looked odd to have the eyes open constantly. On reviewing the animation I noticed that in a few places the arms became completely twisted around so some further keyframes were added to compensate for this. I also checked that the eyes were looking in the right direction and carried out some minor adjustmemts in places. As the animtion is to only be 30-60 seconds in length, but the song goes on for over 3 mins I had to choose a point in which to stop. The ideal time seemed to be at the words "...light it up like it's dynamite..." where it would be possible to create a fireworks display or similar.  For the purpose of this assignment I have not carried out this procedure as I felt it was superfluous to the personaltity of the character and would just be background noise.

To arms

I thought the arms did not move very well at the shoulders. I believe this was more due to the fact that the jelly baby was quite big from the front to the back then the set up of the envelopes. Ideally I should have made the join at the shoulders narrower therby allowing more room for movement.

Background information

I thought it would be appropriate to pay attention to the words of the song and have the jelly baby move accordingly. A storyboard was drawn out to help visualise these movemens and to provide a gudieline for the animation.

Synchronising moves

Having rigged the jelly baby with the bones system and edited the envelopes to control the movement of each individual part howeverI still wanted the character to be fairly bendy but not overly so. I thought the gummy bears might give some insight as these too were originaly jelly type sweets. However a search on youtube revealed a 2D cartoon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loUNoy0Qub0 and a 3D character whose movements were much too rigid and fast for my purposes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=astISOttCQ0 (and actually quite frightening to watch). To help find the sort of movement I wanted from the character I searched BBC iPlayer for current children's animations. I came across "Charley Bear" http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search?q=little%20charley%20bear, whose movements I thought emulated the type of thing I wanted from the jelly baby character. As a soft toy I felt his movement were fluid without going to excess. I even bought a pack of jelly babies to test out their consistency.

Mouth issues

I decided to try and redress the problems I was having with the mouth and the morpher modifier. I made a copy of the torus (mouth) and it's attached FFD box then altered the shape using an image of the phoneme A on a background plane. A morpher modifier was then added to the original torus and FFD box however the previous problem was still encountered. On scrubbimg the playhead I noticed that the copied torus and FFD box moved along with the head so I opened up the schematic view where I severed the link to the head but this did not solve the morpher problem.



Eventually to have the jelly baby character sing along to parts of the song I used keyframes to manipulate the movement of the mouth using the FFD box control points. I still used the phoneme shapes given to match up the mouth movement and shape to the sounds. I zoomed into the timeline so as to marry the two up as accurately as possible. The most difficult aspect was lining up the transition of the mouth movement between each sound.

I still had difficulties with altering the mouth shape to fit in the mouth hole created on the head of the main body.  Even though I tried to match the two up carefully I was not always successful. In future I would prefer to create the mouth as part of the body and use the morpher modifier to animate the character as a whole.

Marking the beat

To try and make the animation moves match up more precisely with the music I opened up the music file in soundbooth in order to add markers to the track. However I was unsure of which format to save the file in as a .bwif format was not available. As such I decided to stick with zooming into the timeline

The bigger picture

After spending ages trying to place the keyframes in line with the beats of the music by attempting to match them up on the timeline I finally discovered how to zoom into the timeline and pan backwards and forwards making matching the two up so much simpler

Sing along - lost voice

As well as having the jelly baby dance to the music I wanted her to sing along to parts of the music using various mouth shapes for the phonemes. I chose to use http://www.garycmartin.com/phoneme_examples.html for image guidance of each phoneme. I decided that the best way to animate between the different mouth shapes would be to use a morpher modifier thereby setting up different channels for each individual phoneme required and as such creating a smooth transition between the mouth movements.

As stated in an earlier blog post I had attached a  FFD box to the mouth shape using bind space warp. To this end I was unsure whether to apply the modifier to the mouth shape, the FFD box or both together. To find the answer I experimented with each method until I got the right one. Unfortunately none of the above methods created any movement with the exception of the mouth alone when the movement occured along the x,y and z axis of the world space.

Animation

I opted to have the jelly baby dance to some music. To enable me to be able to control the movements effectively I used the HI solver to attach some of the bone together. Trial and error was used to establish which bones were more effective attached together.

I added the sound track to the timeline using the track editor curve. This then enabled me to match up the movements more accurately with the music.

I carried out a test render to ascertain an approximate time limit for rendering but encounterd some unkown problems and 3DS Max became non responsive or shut down. I tried using different render set ups to no avail. To try and simplify the information being converted into the .avi file I removed the soundtrack as this could be added later in Adobe Soundbooth. After removing this file the rendering process became more responsive, however when I tried to import this into Soundbooth it did not recognise the codec. 

Big Eyes

I asked some children for their views about the character and the general consensus was that it should have bigger eyes as this would make it cuter. This then led me to have a look around at some other characters already out in the film industry and found that this was indeed the case

Linking it all together

As the eyes and mouth were separate from the body I had to link them to the head bone. At first I tried to attach them to the body itself, but this method did not work.

Them bones them bones

I first decided to use the biped system to rig the jelly baby for movement; however this did not prove to be an effective method so I changed this to the bones system. To enable the jelly baby to move as accurately as possible I had to edit the envelopes to be more in tune with its natural movements. This did take a fair bit of trial and error to make correct.

facial features

EYES
To create the orbital recess the polygons around the eye area were divided up using the cut tool. The vertices of which were then moved to create a more rounded area.  The resulting central polygon was then extruded back to create the orbital floor. The actual eye was created seperately using a sphere as the eyeball with a small hemisphere for the pupil area. This sphere was then copied and increased in size before altering the hemisphere settings to create the upper eyelid. This sphere was copied in order to create the bottom eyelid. Both the eyelids were then moved into position around the eyeball. An FFD box was placed around the first eye and the two linked together using the bind to spacewarp. Some difficulty was experienced in linking the FFD box to the eye, as such the FFD box had to be redone several times before it did work correctly. Due to the problems encountered with this, instead of creating another FFD box around the second eye the first ensemble was copied and the original second eye deleted. Both these were then seated within the orbital space prepared on the  face. The vertices around the orbital area were then finely tuned to fit snugly around the eye.

NOSE

Using the cut tool in polygon mode, the area around the nose was divided up. Switching to vertex mode these were moved to make a basic rounded nose shape. Going back to polygon mode the middle polygon was bevelled out and slighlty inwards a couple of times. The resulting vertices were then edited to finish off the shape.  

MOUTH

The mouth shape on the face proved challenging at first and various methods such as trying to split the edges did not prove to be effective. Ultimately the cut tool was used to break up the polygons around where the mouth opening should be. The central poygons were then deleted to create the opening. The lips were created seperately out of a torus which was then moved into place. Once in place the vertices around the mouth opening and the torus shape itself were manipulated until a satisfactory shape was acheived.

modelling process

The jelly baby started life as a cube 6x6x6 faces. After this was converted to an editable poly the polygons in the middle of the top section were selected and bevelled upwards and in/out to create the basic head shape. The selection mode was then changed to vertex and soft selection used to manipulate the head into a more rounded shape. Going back to polygon mode the two rows of polygons on each side of the base of the cube were extruded out several times to make the legs. The bottom polygon at the front of each leg was the bevelled out and inwards a few times to create the foot shape. Converting back to vertex mode and soft selection the vertices on the front were manipulated to create a more rounded look, especially across the belly area and the legs. The back of the jelly baby was deliberately left flat as this is how they are. The arms were created the same as the legs, however it took several attempts to work out which polygons provided the best effect to create the da vinci pose. Switching back to vertex mode and using soft selection the arms were made more rounded.

drawings

before working on the 3D model of the jelly baby I did some drawings as a guideline.

The Jelly Babies

When deciding on the different personality types I asked some children for their opinion, the results of which are as follows. They also helped to chose the names.

character idea

Luxo Jr

Since its inception in 1986 of the animated short Luxo Jr, from Pixar Animation Studios, CGI animated characters have become commonplace, with many more animation studios producing fantastic works.

moodboard of cartoon characters

This is a collection of cartoon characters. This represents a small fraction of what is and has been available

What makes a cartoon character appealing

To be able to design a successful 3D character it is important to discover what makes the characters on the market today appealing to today's audience. As such several children were asked who their favourite cartoon character was and why. So far amongst those aged 10-14, Phineas and Ferb was the most popular cartoon, with Ferb being liked due to his green hair and Isabella because of her catchphrase "wot cha doin'". Not enough data has been returned to ascertain which characters appeal to the younger audience.