Since making the fur, I’ve spend the first couple weeks relaxing and recharging the batteries. Afterwards, I began on rigging. The process for me takes a while, being that I created all the rigs out of scratch with custom UI scripts included. Right now I’m about 80-85% done, just working on the facial rigs and scripts.
07/16/2020
The Character Update!
After two months of life stuff, as well as moving, I finally completed all seven character rigs, including facial rigs!
This marks a huge leap forward in progression to completing the first episode. With all my characters done, I can move on to modeling other assets such as firearms, gear, and environments! I’ve also chosen to rename the show, as it made more sense in the long run.
It is now named, “Animals of War: Project Menagerie”. This will be for season 1 of the show, focusing mainly on the American side of things. Season 2 will probably focus on the Russian animals, and will respectively be named, “Animals of War: SOAD”. All this came with a new logo to represent as well. Don’t worry, nothing has changed lore wise and all the characters remain the same… for now.
I will reintroduce each character once more, but with their fully finished rigs. Just a few poses and renders in high res, enjoy! And thanks for checking it out!
Introducing (again), Charlie!
Just realized, he needs gear to look complete, soon to come!
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Woohoo! Great work, Blue! I am very excited to see the gear and environment you have planned to look like.
Nice job, my friend. I hope to be able to watch the episode next year (will mid-2021 be the goal with the episode? Or what do you have in mind?)
Edit: I just noticed the third image is blurry, was that an intention for it, or something?
2nd Edit: Never mind, it just needed to load the image. All good for me!
07/17/2020
Here is character poster 2 of 7 for introductions.
Two of these renders was from before he had a facial rig, but I managed.
Introducing, (as you seen a hundred times now), Caliber!
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7/23/2020
Oops, I thought I posted Toby here already. In case anyone was wondering, I’ve been focusing on teaching myself some new techniques for hard surface modeling. I have a lot… or… A LOT of modeling to do. We’re talking guns, gear, environments, vehicles, you name it.
Nonetheless, here he is. (Same pics as on discord, just ported over)
5 Likes
Nice, Blue. I can guess this is going to be a part of the animatic you’ve made, right? Good job with the WIP of the base! It’s looking good so far!
Thanks! Also yes, a good amount of this will be in the show.
Happy New Year everyone!!
More WIP’s from the Alaskan base. The scale modeling of the entire base is complete. Included are some small basic assets to accompany the scene. By no means is this the final product. To be honest, some of these areas will be rebuild for scenes with the animated characters and will be tweaked accordingly. Those are the areas that will be the focus in the upcoming time.
So here is the whole base:
Wireframe:
It consists of three floors underground, with the center of the base being the Atrium. The Atrium is considered the heart of the base, and everything flows around it. It’s the area with the tree in the center.
The Atrium:
A top down view of the base:
Although I could go through the whole base in great detail, I’d rather just sum up the area by their 6 sections, going counter-clockwise starting from the NW side.
Starting from the NW side of the base consists of the Deployment bay, Locker rooms, Armory, and the control room:
The West Side of the base consists mainly of the Medical Area. This area has a lot more than what’s being shown, but it is a key part of the base.
The Medical area:
The SW side includes the cafeteria, and the Auditorium
Cafeteria:
Auditorium:
The SE side includes the storage area, and Administrative area. The admin area is where the Commander works, and is also where the humans enter the base.
Storage Area (With no assets):
Admin Area (Exterior View):
The East Side consists of the the Dormitory and Library. This is the area where the occupants of the base live and rest. There are 3 floors of this and can hold up to 372 animals agents.
180 Medium/Large animals
192 Small animals
The Dormitory (Med/Large):
Typical Room:
Dormitory (Small):
Library (Books not included):
The NE side consists of the Gymnasium and Gun range:
Gym (Entrance):
Pool Area (Lifeguard or equipment not included):
Gun Range:
Of course all this will come in detail more in time. Like I said still WIP so it’s very barren, and grey…
Any thoughts or ideas, or feedback, please let me know!
Happy 2021!!!
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Doing some character improvements as it’s the next thing on the list. I’m going to re-work some design aspects on the characters starting with the Otter as my guide.
Starting with the eyes, and holy wow the difference in appeal…
I had too much fun with it lol
Let me know if ya like the changes!!
10 Likes
Good job! Nice to see that you continue working on it. I really like the new facial expressions you have, very cute and expressive (there is no doubt what the emotions are).
Are you still working on this project?
Yes I am, and I need to post an update… Long story short I put this project aside for work on my degree, which btw school is making me work on Maya, so that’s fun and I never have time for Blender nowadays because of it. But there is SOME stuff I want to share, details on next post.
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To quickly update on this, 3D wise nothing much new since I curbed it for school priorities, but I am still doing a HUGE redesign on the characters… The main character Caliber took on a new look, some of you may like him and some of you may think he’s a bit cartoony, maybe a little Disney’ish? Either way I enjoy his new version and hope you guys do too!
His ortho redesign
Initial concept
Sculpt and retopo on Blender
Appeal is way up on this one, since I took the cartoony route. No rig or textures sadly yet.
I also did a small basic 40 second storyboard involving this character and was planning to animate it once I got this rig up and going! (Posted on YouTube due to file size restrictions)
Other WIP’s include new character concepts, like…
Jae the Raccoon
Appears in Ep.2 (she needs clothes!)
Kayla the Otter Nurse
A side character, but super sweet!
Finally, most of the other work is more lore based stuff, so much in fact that I might just make a Wiki based website with art that covers it all. I’m serious, this stuff goes really in depth and it’s getting difficult to explain this story in a nutshell. It’s like asking to summarize Star Wars in one paragraph and get all the necessary details in. It’s just not possible. Soo, instead of typing all the lore stuff, I’m just to going to make a huge wiki on it.
That’s all I got, I’m usually quick to respond on here if you gots questions! If not, PM me or use discord! Server link on 1st post
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