Rough Storyboard

Concept for the New Tropical

Some more concept will be on the way. This is a digital painting done in Photoshop. I wanted to mimic the tradition painting style to give it a unique look. My first influence was the art work for Street Fighter 4 and how they stylized their to look as if it had been painted with inks. I feel that by making the brush strokes visible give the image more energy and life.

I like Monet's painting because of the way the he conveys movement.

Final Reef

The reed was finished 2 weeks ago but the grreen plants on the left and right use alot of polys so we have to take them out because Ferhan's computer will take take alon time to render both the plants and the RealFlow water.

Oh Yeah, Got the Bubbles!!

These Bubbles are rendered out on my computer in Maya Software.  They look very realistic which is what we want for the look of our animation.  They can be modeled to any shape.  I'll put the link up to where I downloaded them from.

Blend Shapes so Far

Starting Blend Shapes

I have the main Blend Shapes in. I'm creating more Blend Shapes at teh moment to give the Fish as much character as possible. The Blend Shapes in the image above are mainly Blowing motions.

Putting in Squash and Stetch

I had to look back at an old Bouncing Ball tutorial for this. I'll post it! Mesh is still good.

High Poly Tropical Fish

I'm very happy with the result. Looks like a funny fish so it's time to give it some character!

Low Poly and Textured

Low Poly Tropical Fish

I'm happy with the low poly geometry. It looks flexible so I will be looking into Squash Stretch and Bend Deformers as well as a Fish Rig.

Tropical Fish Idea

I didn't like the previous Fish that I modeled because it doesn't look like a fish that you would find in a fish tank. I'm going to base my Fish character on this style of Tropical Fish. It looks really vibrant and colourful which will attract the attention of the audience.

Production Plan

At the moment we have just finished texturing the enviroment and fishes. We are going to be Rigging over the weekend so we can animate on the Monday. We have heard shocking News about the new deadline which has cut our production for Rave on Air by 3 weeks. We should be able to get our aniamtion done for Rave on Air and Maybe have time to do the Quality Control a Day earlier if everything goes well. This Production Plan is a new one which has been designed for the New Deadline.

This Week and Beyond

AIMS FOR THIS WEEK

1. Finish Modeling Completely (Very Doable)

2. Make a start Texturing (Enviroment and Fish)

3. Final Storyboard

Overall this has been a good week so far.  Both fish models have been done and the enviroment is starting to take shape as well.  Our main challenge will be the rendering times and whether the computers can handle all the high textures and particle effects.  Ferghan was having trouble with creating bubbles in RealFlow, so I did some research on the internet for other ways of doing this.  I found a guide on creating soapy bubbles in maya which showed me what was possible.  The guide was useless because it never actual tells you Step-by-Step how he does any of it.  I figured that you could model the bubbles in Maya and then just create bubble shader.  The benefits of modeling the bubbles in Maya as opposed to creating them in After Effects is that we can have more control over the shape and movement of the bubbles.

Earlier on during the week, Ferghan was experimenting with Maya shatter.  This gave me an idea on how to make the bubbles burst.  If we use place an Alpha Channeled plane over the top of the fish tank, we could make the bubbles shatter when they hit it.  We can then put the bubbles on a seperate layer in After Effects and slowly decrease the Opacity of the bubble fragments until they disappear. 

Okay thats it for now, back to work to the Modeling! 

Plant Test

We have decided to look into the water plants and reefs.  This is a rough plant test to see if I can get them swaying in the water.  The reef is going to be bump mapped to give it a rough and rocky surface while I'll place various plants on top.

Fish Tank Enviroment

Ferghan and myself decided to for the aquarien fish tank.  I like the aquarien fish tank because it tries to replicate the natural envirement that fish live in.  I also find that it looks aesthetic and calming which would contradict the characters of the 2 loud burping fish.  

With the aquarien, we will be playing the the audiences perception.  

Fish Model

The fish has started to take shape and is looking good so far.  I'm going to go back in to the model and add more features on it like cheeks and gills.  I' going to make the eyes slightly larger as well to give the fish a cartoony feel.  

I think that blend shapes will work for for the puffing of the cheeks and depending on how close the camera is on the fish I'll will either bump map or sculpt the gills.

Fish Scales

Thinking about colourizing these scales for the texturing. We are going for cartoon styled fish, so I amy need to ctreate textures from scratch.

Fish Scales