One of the props I needed to make for Mechropair was a teacup and saucer. Original there was a bit of confusion about the overall design of this prop, however I was able to clarify that it was to be a classical type of teacup with a flower pattern showing on the outside and gold embelishments along its edges. The end result was Modelled in Maya and Textured using a combination of Photoshop and Substance Painter.
As part of my work for Mechropair I was responsible for the modelling, texturing and rigging of a 30 pin iPhone cable. The first two steps were fairly straight forward, however having little experience with rigging anything but characters using a IK rig before I had to do some research before I could complete a useable rig for the cord. This also involved some trial and error. Initially I attempted to simply turn the cord into and nCloth and attach it to the plug at the end. This method was not very effective unfortunately as turning the cord into an nCloth cause it to collapse in on itself, loosing its shape.
Ultimately I ended up using a combination of two online tutorials to create the rig (one of which was in spanish). This method involved creating joints for the the cord attaching those joints to a IK Spine Handle, Binding the Mesh to the Joints and then attching the plug to the end. After all that I then placed controllers on the rig to make it easy for the animator to use.
Below is an example of the rig at work:
Below are some of the small props I created for the Graduate film Mechropair. All of these Props were Modelled using Maya and then all but the desk calendar were then textured in substance painter (the desk calendar was textured using photoshop).
A old style candle. After completing this model I found out that the team was actually after a smaller much simpler candle. such is life
A desk calendar, that calender itself was designed in Photoshop with the month of July being selected as the current month.
Some very rusty gears to be scattered around the workshop scene
Designed to replicate a 30 pin iphone cord. This model was later rigged for animation
An updated texture for the iphone cord designed to make it look more worn and old to fit with the rest of the scene
Two of the large Props that I have created for this project are a free standing world globe and a old style beaker with stand. Both of these models were created in Maya and then textured in substance painter. For the globe I intial thought I would run into more difficulties than I did. This was because I was worried about being about to texture the globe as when UV unwrapping with a single line the UV would be distorted at the top and bottom, however I quickly realised that this was actually exactly what I wanted. As world maps are distorted to make them lay flat, when applying this distorted map back to the sphere this distortion is actually neutalised making the final result look exactly how you would want a world globe to appear. To top it off the stock unwrapping that is appled to sphere in Maya worked perfectly, only needing to be scaled a little bit to fit the map.
The beaker took a bit longer to make and I am not sure if the glass turned out how I would have liked it. I am pretty happy with the rest of the model though.
One of the props I was assigned to create were some books. To make this happen I created three different models, two closed books and one open and then textured them in multiple different colours using Substance Painter. At the end of the modeling for all the props I create I hope to be able to combine them into an environment of my our creation to showcase them working in a scene.
The results book models can be seen below:
Open Book:
Simple Design, Closed Book:
Book with metal detailing:
While modelling props for the film Mechropair the team was trying to find ways to fill the scene. As most of the story happens in a antique store that is a lot of shelfing to fill. As a result I came up with a quick solution. Create a box, make a plan. Then turn the plan into a nCloth and drop it onto the box. This was a simple way of making a shelf filler for the scene, some of the results of this experiement can be seen below:
Below is two more of the rough animation scenes I have been working on for In the Drink. This was created based of both the storyboard and animatic that had been created.
This scene was set on a pier and features the character of Tony
Close up shot of a mixer, being mixed.
As we have progressed into the production stage of the Film it came to my attention that we were running a bit low on animators. As a result I ended up taking on four of the scenes to rough animate myself. While not strictly a 2D animator I was able to take on some of the more simple scenes to relieve some of the load. Two of the scenes are below, as we progress I plan to complete my other two scenes as well as help to complete the colouring of the some of the clean animated scenes.
As a asset and prop modeller on the Graduate Film Mechropair I have been responsible for the creation of a number of props. One of these was a desk lamp. The environment to was to be placed in was an old workshop with a number of random objects so I wanted to create something the would be unique but also still fit in with its environment. I eventually settled on the style of a 1950s era Bank Lamp (so named for its prevalent within banking institutions during that time). This design was unique but instantely recognisable. After doing some research into the look, shape and materials used in bank lamps. I spent some time on turbo squid looking at how the construction of the mesh might be achieved before I opened up Maya and stated modelling. I ended up with the design below.
As we entered the pre-production stand of the film it became clean that the team would need some scheduling tools to use to keep track of our progress. Originally we had started the project using Excel to create tracking sheets for the project however it became clean that this was not an idea solution for us. As a result I did some research looking into various team management and track solutions including trello and slack before eventually settling on a online tool called Monday.com. Monday is a team tracking and scheduling tool that allowed us to create 'boards' splitting the project up into manageable chunks. It took just over a day to fully understand how the software worked and to setup our project so if would work in a way that provided us with useful information as we created updates, in the end we ended up using number of boards, this included: Rough Animation, Clean Animation, Colour Animation. Post Production, Marketing and Print and Team Tasks.
After setting this up it took a bit of time to introduce the team to the software but overall it has allowed the project to run a lot smoother. The team can comment on works in progress and the visual representation allows us to easily see where we are at during each stage of the project. From a producer stand point it has also helped tremendously as it has allowed me to get updates any time a team member makes an update, Whether it is commenting on a scene in progress, completing a task or asking for some feedback.
