Modelling Slurggy's Body And Mouth

I have begun modelling the basic shape of my slug following a tutorial I found online: http://www.escalight.com/tutorials/3dsmax-tutorials/modeling-a-snail-part-1.html. When finished modelling the basics, I will be tweaking various parts of it such as including hair, caveman clothing, different eyes and teeth, as well as the animation being done freely etc.

Below shows my processes:

The first image shows that the slug's body was created with just a simple capsule shape.

The creation of the mouth was achieved by using the cut tool (cutting out parts of the capsule to gain that mouth shape by selecting the relevant vertices), and then welding the vertices together. Once that had been done, I had to select all the polygons inside that shape, and clicked on the 'inset' button several times so that I would get several outlines of the mouth going inwards. The very middle part of the mouth was then deleted, and the outer mouth outlines were scaled to size so that it wasn't so big. Finally, the middle polygons of the mouth were extruded and beveled out to create the lips. The hollow part of the mouth were done by selecting relevant edges and then moved inwards a few times. To close the mouth I clicked on the 'cap' button on the borders around the hole.

The 2nd image just shows that I had to stretch out the shape of the slug's body so that it was longer and smoother looking using the 'soft selection' tool. I also made him quite chubby!

This 3rd part shows how I made the shape of the slug to be 'slug like' using the line tool and 'PathDeform' Modifier. This part took quite a lot of time to perfect and took several attempts to get it right! Basically the line acts as a bone for the slug's body shape and copies the shape of the line - drawing the line is quite tricky! I also had to play around with the parameters settings, changing the percent to achieve the look. After playing around with this I still wasn't too happy with the shape, so kept re-drawing the line, but only to realise a few hours later (yes!) that I could also move the line around to get a better shaped line (was much easier than having to re-draw everytime, saved time too!).

Storyboard - The Stupid Slug...

I have now come up with a brief storyline for the slug caveman. His name will be Slurggy, just because it suits his appearance and sounds quite 'dumb'. :)

The idea is that the viewer will see the cave first, expecting something big to appear, however all you will see is a small slug coming out instead! He goes off to search for food (at least that is what the viewers should be thinking), but he's actually gone out to find a flower for his home. When he eventually drags the flower back, he realises its dead with literally no petals left from all that dragging!

This story will give me lots of room to mess about with his facial expressions, as he can be seen as being very excited and happy when he finds a flower, or when he is bashing the flower to 'cut' it, he can be seen as stupid and dumb. Then when he goes back home and realises the flower is dead, he will have a surprised and angry face on him.

New Character Development

Here are my new sketches for my slug caveman. I am quite keen on the one with the monobrow and think will stick with that look for when I model!

A different Idea....

After another long think, I have decided to change my caveman idea quite drastically (well, appearance wise)!

Instead of creating a human caveman, I have decided to change it so that it is an animal. This was because I felt that kids relate to a character more when it is an animal, especially judging by how many animated films there are at the moment that uses animals for characters, which are adored by kids. Human characters on the other hand, I feel kids still appreciate, but not so much when you compare to an animal character.

So, for my character I have chosen to pick an animal that can be seen as 'gross' and most likely an animal which doesn't have the 'aww factor' when you first hear what it is. That animal, is a slug. I felt that a slug would be ideal as it is a slow moving animal, in which case I could make it quite dopey in relation to a caveman's knowledge too.

I will be putting some of the ideas from the earlier drawings of the cavemen I drew into the slug's look too! These will be posted up later.

Eye Rigging

In this lecture, we learnt how to rig movements for eyes. The tutorial for this was found from this site: http://www.comet-cartoons.com/3ddocs/eyerigging/

It taught me how to use FFD Spacewarp modifier, as well as the morph modifier also. The morph modifier I found to be extremely useful as it meant I could rig the eyelids easily without having the risk of the eyes messing up if moved on the actual object. With using the morpher modifier, it basically assigns whatever shape/expression FFD you create to the original eyeball. So when you keyframe the movement, it follows the targets to the shape/FFD, depending on how high you move the number up.

Below shows my testing, showing the different expressions created as well as having the actual eyeballs and eyelids moving by rotating each part individually.

I have to say, I am pleased with the outcome of this and am definitely going to use this technique for my character as it is perfect for a cartoon format. Plus, it was quite easy to do so that is always a bonus! I haven't attached to a head for testing yet but will try this out once I have started modelling my character.

Rigging Leg Testing

In this lecture, we had to learn how to rig leg movements using IK solvers on bones, and animate them to do a simple walk. The tutorial we followed was from www.free3dtutorials.com/modeling/3d-max/walk-cycle-part-1.php.

I found this method of leg movements to be extremely fiddly - I had several problems with the dummies not working after being linked, and sometimes once they are linked, the other bones just randomly detached itself, meaning I could only move the bones using the blue crosses that shows up. I also had to make sure that when I am linking dummies to bones, it had to be from the bones to the dummy, otherwise linking from the dummy to the bones doesn't work. Very frustrating when moving the blue crosses also because I found it difficult to tell which cross belonged to which foot/heel etc.

A video of my attempt is shown below - it was very tricky to do and looks dodgy in certain places, so it could be improved on in terms of accuracy of bends etc. On the whole I think it's OK for a first attempt...

Character Design Ideas

After much thought (and debate!), I have now decided to create a caveman for my character. The appearance that I am aiming for is to create it in a cartoony style, a style I'm sure that most kids will love and appreciate, seeing as there are so many children's 3D films around that has at least 1 character a kid idolises.

I have drawn a couple of character ideas shown below, each with different types of personalities - though when it comes to actually creating the character in 3DS Max, I may want to switch some persona's around depending on how the caveman looks.

At the moment, I like the 1st caveman more and so do most other people, so I may stick to that appearance. He does look a bit like Fred Flintstone though which I'm trying to steer away from, so might change the cloth outfit a bit or add longer hair and a beard, but keeping the friendly giant look along with it.