Hola to all. Ok, that’s the point : I am still working on my short toon divx (i am using Blender+Wings to animate/model, and Lightflow+Pov+Virtualight to render some parts). I have no problems with shading and animation. The pain came cos now i would like to add a Disney’s charachter that gets into my short, wander a bit and then goes away. It is Lilo from Lilo y Stitch. The problem is about the modelling : seeying the original movie, i came to the point where i realize that there is not a static shape of her face. Like in all Disney’s works, the animation is sometimes near to the 25 fps, with the shape changing always to permit facial exprsssions via exageration and other tricks (there are good tutorials about it, around the net).
The question is : how should i model this fast-changing and non-static face? I thought about giving it a normal stand (in wings3d and then convertin it to subsurf in blender) and then putting all my efforts on animating it. But it’s a pain to understand what’ the actual volume of a cartoon face.
So : can someone point me to good tutorials on modelling complex cartoon charachters? I mean, not shading stuff, but modelling one. Or can someone share his/her experience on the subject?
I will post something as soon as i get useful results.
Thanks in advance.
I was not talking about animation. In fact i already thought about using RVK and armatures for the animation, but my problem is related to the modelling of a starting face. I mean, converting a 2d variable shape into a volume that i will then modify with RVK and the other tools.
I am doing tons of sketches of this little nice Lilo, from all the point of view i can imagine, but her shape changes according to the expression! I thought of a serious-standard image, and i am actually trying to put it into a wings3d mesh, later to be converted into subsurf.
One thing i am realizing is that i will probably have to use animated textures to render some features like the mouth, cos doing it with RVK would be a pain, due to the huge variety of dimensions! i have the mouth getting from a little kiss to a WIDE smile, and i am sure that using RVK will create a lot of creases on the control mesh.
You can use a ‘lattice’ to deform all or parts of objects. This retains their size/volume, and the lattice properties can be animated. There’s a tut on cartoon eyes that goes over this technique, it’s the way to acheive traditional ‘squash and stretch’ of drawn animation.
