Creating an indie film can be an overwhelming task. There's a script, voice actors, motion actors, art direction, 3d modeling, uv mapping, texturing, rigging, animation, post processing, video editing, music, etc.

College life sometimes gets in the way of what I really want to do. Taking time for myself to do the things I want is difficult but I try to be productive. It can be hectic but nothing will get done if I don't do something. Most of these blog posts are written with something I have done but nothing I am currently working on. I'm changing that to a journal entry style. I'm breaking s=things down weekly instead of post by post. I want to make progress and make a lot of changes, fail fast, and problem solve. For one I plan to redesign the backpack and clean up edge loops on the mesh. I think the mesh is too complex for animation and although it has great features it's not what will show on screen. It should match the 2D illlustration as close as possible. I've had some ideas about what the character will look like but I never put together a character sheet for reference. That's something I did with my ball jointed doll project but never for animation. I also need to start using 3Dcoat again. I love sculpting more than drawing because I can create things and take it further than just a statue. 3Dcoat is fun and it's something I haven't talked much about in my blogs.

Before I can do all of that I need to write down what I need to do and organize my thoughts and create a workflow. This is easy to do with Notion.so. It's a great organizer and it's free for college students. My only problem with this is that I spend time clicking buttons and typing so I get carried away with other things instead of what I should be doing and so there's this...

The Journal

Clean topology is needed to have good deformation. The rigging process is complex but not impossible or difficult. I've been switching between Modo and Blender. I plan to use rigify to rig my characters. I'm looking for a simple solution for rigging bipedal characters. Blender is known for independent films and with it's open source code and with everyone coming on board to support it I think its a great time to start using it in my current pipeline. For modeling I much prefer Modo any day. I'm still working out the shade editor in Blender. I love using nodes but Modo's render engine is amazing and I can get fast results tweaking a few parameters with ease. I know it's possible to get similar results in Cycles but like learning a new language you're doing the same thing only a different way.

To start using rigify your character must be smaller than the rig itself because you want to scale the rig down to match the size of your character. Why? because it prevents problems down the line. I will be playing with rigify and share my progress. See you on the next entry.