Fooby the Kamikaze Watermelon (Needs heavy critique/ advice)

Artwork Works in Progress
1

This is a large project that I have been working on for the past few weeks. It involves a LOT of stuff that I’m totally clueless on. I’ve been slowly updating a WIP thread on another forum, but I need specific critique that only the blender community can contribute. This is a revisiting of one of my favorite “cartoon” characters, Fooby the kamikaze watermelon, from the old flash video the Demented Cartoon Movie. For starters, here is my reference and inspiration sheet.

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u35/Harpowithayoyo72/inspirationsheetcopy.png
inspirationsheetcopy.png1023×688 631 KB

Next up are the first illustrations pointing out where I want the project to go. I only post this because while it isnt cgi, I’ll need your help putting this concept into the scene itself.

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u35/Harpowithayoyo72/foobysketchconceptsheet.png
foobysketchconceptsheet.png1023×682 320 KB

This is the first modelling shot, with the watermelon texture. It’s handmade because I couldnt find any good tilable watermelon textures.

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u35/Harpowithayoyo72/foobyprogress1.png
foobyprogress1.png960×540

Some quick faces. He is technically an inanimate object so I just wanted to keep the mouth a cutaway of the watermelon and the eyes to be just googly eyes, but this is really unimportant until the rest of the scene is cohesive and more or less finished.

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u35/Harpowithayoyo72/foobyoptions.png
foobyoptions.png1022×409 317 KB

First composite shot, with the grass modelled and the camera set up more or less how I want it to be in the final render.

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u35/Harpowithayoyo72/FOOBYPROGREESS3.png
FOOBYPROGREESS3.png960×540 384 KB

This brings us up to speed, and I apologize for it being a whole lot for a first post. So, here are a bunch of things that I am concerned with right now:

  1. I want to make the watermelon more realistic and that means I will probably have to take my own texture pictures of some watermelon. As it stands it is a super simple model and I can afford to put a lot more effort into it. Any tips on lighting? I have briefly heard of projection painting and was wondering if that could be applied here, since I really dont know what it is.

  2. The smoke trail will kill me I swear. This is the BIGGEST thing I need advice with right now since I am completely new to particle sims. I could post some of my smoke test renders if it would help, but I really want to get a dirty black smoke blasting out the back with flames at the base of the rocket nozzle. And as far as making it into a trail, I’m clueless. Should I try to have the smoke emitter follow a curve through the trajectory of the watermelon? Or is there something I could do with forcefields to simulate a dirty rocket trail? There seems like many solutions that could conceptually be possible but I have no idea how to implement them or how effective a solution would be.

  3. Since he is so close to the ground, I want the force of the rocket to interact with the grass a little more. I’m barely touching forcefields for the first time, but what I need is a small area, strong wind to just push the grass around in the immediate area. How would I go about doing that. Any advice?

Thank you so much for looking this over and if you have any thoughts or critiques, I could use all the guidance I can get. I started this as a way to push my limits and learn more about blender but I’ve bit off a bit much this time. I’m completely dedicated to finishing so it’s only a matter of time/trial and error.

2

water mellon

well does not look that bad for me
you could add some more bump map to it may be
or texture paint some dust on it
or UV map it to a real water mellon image texture!

it’s up to you

for particules if you animate the water mellon with a particule emitter parented to it then it should produce smoke behind

and for the grass you add a force field to affect the grass if you made the grass with particules

but all these particules system will take a toll on the render time !

hope it gelps

3

It all looks pretty good. I’m not great at grass so prolly take his advice ^, but for the smoke I think you are going to have to do at least two or three particle systems to get what you want, and like Ricky said, that is going to eat the crap out of your render times. Still, one system for the fire, one system for the smoke and probably a third to just add depth and diversity to the smoke.

4

just remember there is an old thread with a jet engine with blue flame in the back
did you see it

it looks nice for the jet engine

z1.jpg800×600 28 KB

and no particules system here

but you could add one

or use a flame thrower from blenderguru tut may be

by the way does anyone has a working flame thrower working in latest SVN ?

cause mine is crashing !

salutations

5

I would like to point out, that although you’ve probably already thought of this, a cut out mouth would greatly affect the aerodynamic characteristics of the watermelon, not that it’s already a marvel of aerodynamic glory. It would however cause the thing to fly all wonky in reality. I realize that a flying watermelon itself is a little unrealistic, but this is the way my brain works, you see. :slight_smile:

Looking good so far though!

6

It’s a cartoon, ampace… There are no real physics in cartoons…
The inside of the watermelon could use some SSS… The shadow looks to dark on it…
About the texture of the watermelon - You could just google to find one…

7

Yep. Got it. Please re-read my original post.