PASQUALE DORSI
valley of flowers
Hand drawn sketch of my character.
Front pose of my character in Maya
Hand drawn sketch of my character.
Valley of Flowers (Spring 2017).
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The story is about a bird name Phoenix who stumbles upon a bunch of flowers. As he strolls down the path of flowers, Phoenix is confronted with a long trench. On the other side of the trench, Phoenix sees a "bed of flowers." Despite not being able to walk or jump over the gap, Phoenix attempts to fly over and reach the "bed of flowers." In the end, Phoenix overcomes the obstacle and begins to revel in his success by admiring the flowers.
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For this animation, the project was to create a character and create a story for the character. Phoenix is one of my first characters I created so I wanted to animate him first. Now that I chose my character I proceed by creating a storyboard for my character, something that was short and simple.
The process begins by creating a T-pose of my character to begin the modeling process.
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Once the character was created and scanned to the computer, the next step was to create the 3D model. In Maya I created the model by using the sketch as a reference to determine the height and width of the characters body. The model was created with its mouth open and arms spread out so the joints would be placed properly. The model would also need a certain amount of edge loops in order to create a deformed mesh.
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After the model was created the character was then textured and rigged. For textures, I split open the characters UV's and painted the fur in Photoshop. As for the skeleton, a auto rig was used for the model, however the skeleton was modified with extra joints in order to move the tail and hair.
Now that the character was painted and rigged it was time to bring the character to life. I quickly created the props necessary for the animation. I instance the flowers in Maya so each of them would be animated at the same time and I used a nurb sphere to create the surrounding sky. Once the scene was ready I began to animate the character. The rendered frames were then brought to Premiere and was edited creating the final product you see now.