Research into other Animated Gorillas.

Disney's 'Tarzan' was one of the first i looked at as there were many gorillas communicating with each other, showing expressions and movement of gorillas.


King kong was another film i looked at, although i didnt want the gorilla so realistic, it again gave me an idea of the gorillas movement.

My Chosen Specialism

My chosen specialism is Character Animation,

This one interested me most out of the three given Briefs. I haven't had a lot of experience in modeling and rigging, and so thought it would be a good brief to enhance my skills in this area.

I have also decided to do this project by myself as i feel character designing, modelling and rigging is all a one-man-band.

Modelling

I took a couple of my character designs and began to create them in 3D in Plasticine so I could gain a better idea of what my character would look like.

I tried to keep the designs as simple as possible, and then I can take the photos into maya and begin to model them.

Images From trip to London Zoo

Research into character design.

Character 1: Gorilla

I went to London Zoo on October 4th for the day and studied some of the gorillas. This helped to give me a better understanding of what they looked like and how they moved. This i thought would help me to animate them properly, and design the rig to help.

Character Animation Brief - When i Grow up i want to be...

I have chosen Brief C: Character Design

Brief C: Character Design

Source: Jon Beeston

Editor -- Axis Animation

http://www.axisanimation.com/

“We would like your students to design and animate some characters for us for a potential animated advertisement for London Zoo. We are thinking about using a visual style that reflects traditional “Claymation” techniques but will be generated using CG processes. The characters should be worked up from the following list:”

1. Willie Billiams – “A hyperactive nine year old on his first visit to London Zoo with an obsessive interest in creepy crawlies.”

2. Pocahontas Billiams – “Willie’s sister, she’s seven years old but much more relaxed and more knowing than her sibling. She wants to be a gorilla.”

3. Wilhemina Billiams – “Willie and Pocahontas’s grandmother, she thinks everything smells bad and is worried that a chimp or one of those nasty bonobos might escape and “Poo in her hat.””

4. Wee Eck McGlone – “London Zoo’s long suffering head keeper sixty, bald, curmudgeonly, Scottish, fiercely patriotic and obsessive about sweeping up dung.”

5. Cornelius – “A middle aged silver back gorilla, the most civilised and sensible occupant of the zoo by far.”

“Your students should consider the following points when working through their character designs:”

• “If they work in 3D then they should concentrate on two characters from the list per animator.”
• “If they work in 3D then they should be using one of the major 3D packages, i.e. Maya, Lightwave, or Max. The characters should be fully modelled to a maximum resolution of about 100,000 polygons, decent texturing is vital, we won’t accept a model alone at this stage. The model should be rigged”
• “We expect to see support work on paper, development drawings and character sheets that should include orthogonal views, i.e. front, back, top, and side, and a more expressive drawing of the character in a typical pose.”
• “We would like to see some expressive animation sequences that demonstrate the functionality of the rig and also character performance.”