Litghting and textures

I haven’t done much lighting before, but I think it looks pretty good. 

I set up three point area lights, with differing colours and intensity’s, trying to match where the light was coming from, and where it would be reflected. 

The strong beam of light coming in through the window, looked nice, but didn’t seem to be the actual source of illumination for the most part. So I placed my main light at the window, but made it much less intense and angled it more towards my character.

The back and side light I placed, mostly trying to get the shadows on the character right, by showing where the light would be reflected from in the room.  

 

I also redesigned the squirrel texture, to make it fit in more with the scene, but still not blend in too much with the wall behind. I also created a simple texture for the Basket. To help it blend in with the colour scheme of the overall scene.

 

Character Profile

Oh, I forgot to upload my character profile.

Sammy Squirrel (original name I know!) is a Kung Fu geek just like his best friend Po.

He takes himself quite seriously, but isn’t actually very good.

In the clip he up early, so that his friend Po can wake to see him concentrating very hard on his meditation. However is efforts go unnoticed, and he becomes irritated by his friend disturbances.

tail flick dialema

Originally I had worried that moving the tail around allot, would run the risk of having too much happening at once, but looking at this simple test run; I actually prefer the swishy tail. I think it adds allot of expression to my character, which I good since the more subtle movements might be wasted in the background.

My Video Refrence

Just acting out a few reactions for my character, to get a feel for the movements and make sure there realistic.

Better refrences

Most of the squirrel characters i could think of had a very rapid and twitchy way of moving, which would be incongruous with my idea of meditation. This clip from sword and the stone had some really lovely animation, with more humanised squirrel characters.

I like their way of mostly moving at a normal pace, but exaggerating the speed of certain actions for emphasis. I think this approach would work well for my animation.  

This clip from Kung Fu Panda itself is also a really nice reference. Mostly all I want to take inspiration from is the way his ear twitches agitatedly. I also really like that little split second motion when he begins to turn back around, at 2.25.

Video Refrences!

Cute but sad video about a squirrel trying to protest its dead friend; but for animation purposes a good reference. I didn’t know that squirrels moved their tails when agitated, but it could be quite expressive. I also looked at other more general videos to get a feel for the wat they move.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCBfdUhrk80&feature=player_detailpage

I’ve also been looking at some animated squirrels such as Hammy from “Over the Hedge”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=n0ykM1ALggE

But I like his animation better because of all the small gestures, and shifty eyes.

who make allot of fast jerky movements. As does Scrat from “Ice age”

This video had allot nice demonstrations for how they move

So, on to Compositing!

The clip I’ve chosen is from from Kung Fu Panda. I've never really done this before, so I’m not quite sure what to expect. But the camera doesn’t move at all, except for when it cuts to views where you won’t be able to see my character, so that should be nice and simple.

The lighting might be a little tricky as there is a pretty strong stream of it coming through the window, but the rest is softly illuminated, but I should be fine.

The clip is from quite a recent film so it should be fairly easy to match.

There is a nice big space to the left of the screen that I can use.

In keeping with the film, I thought I would have an animal character sitting trying to meditate, and becoming annoyed at Po disturbing him.  

I went through a couple of rigs looking for one that I could have crossing their legs in a meditative pose.

Finally I found the “Squirrely” Rig, which has allot of nice leg control options.

As my character would be quite small I wanted to make sure I had some strong poses.  I liked the idea of having the tail down while my characters relaxed at the beginning, before snootily flicking its tail up when disturbed.  However in the short clip it all that movement proved to be too distracting. So I simplified it down to a few agitated tail flicks.