Reflective diary

Wrecking Ball Evidence

 

 

Storyline

 

This piece of work was based on an idea I got while watching a YouTube video (Mercader, 2013) that showed an Alien singing the Gloria Gaynor classic, “I Will Survive”. I wanted to develop something with similar connotations that expressed both satirical and dark humour. The character I decided that would best evoke the necessary feelings in the audience was the well-loved and funny “Minion” (Illumination Entertainment, 2014) best known for its appearance in Despicable Me 1 & 2 and soon to be seen in its own Minion movie. The character would also bring out sympathy in the viewer because of the innocent nature it portrays.

 

The first stage in the process of creating my Minion was to undertake some research into the characteristics of the Minion. This included looking into the types of clothes it wore the way it moved any behavioural idiosyncrasies it had. I also searched the internet for any tutorial videos (Mercader, 2013) that provided instructions on how to develop my Minion. I came across one or two that were very useful as they provided details on how to model, texture, rig and skin my Minion.

 

Having done this I then went onto create several basic storylines that I could evaluate. I then developed a storyboard for the most promising of my ideas before further developing it to become my piece of 10-30 second animation. The storyboard outlines the basis of the animation from the starting point where the Minion slides in at speed before realising that he is facing in the wrong direction. He springs into action to rectify his predicament, twisting round so that he is facing in the right direction. After failing to reassure the audience of his good intentions he shrivels up into a depressed state. His eye then suddenly opens, a smile comes to his face and he begins to shake as hears the music beginning to play.

 

As the music in the animation builds to a crescendo the Minion will be heard singing “I came in like a wrecking ball” (MoZella et al, 2013). It is at this point that to the surprise of the Minion and the viewer that a huge wrecking ball will swing across the scene knocking the Minion out of sight. The wrecking ball will then swing back across the scene dripping with gory blood to add a final piece of dark humour to the animation.

 

 

Technical Development

 

Main Body

Following on from the instructive YouTube guide that I had found I started off by modelling the main part of the body. This was achieved by drawing out a sphere and putting its poly-count to 8 x 8. I did this to reduce the amount of data therefor reducing the risk of crashes. I shaped and modelled the sphere until it was the shape of a tic-tac.

 

Arm

I then worked on an arm, developing it from a cylinder I reduced its poly-count to 6 x 6. By reducing the poly count it also made it easier to attach it to the body. I shaped the cylinder so that it had a more Minion arm like appearance. I also added a bend to the arm so that the elbow was more prominent. This made the movement more effective when I came to do the rigging. Once I was happy with end result of my arm I started the process of attaching it to the body. The first thing I did was to remove a patch of faces on the right side of the body as this was where I was going to attach my arm, using merge vertices. I then deleted the faces on the shoulder end of the arm before selecting the vertices on both the shoulder and the arm in order that the two could be correctly merged.

 

Leg

After this I turned my attention to the legs where I basically repeated the same process that I had used for the arms. With the legs I drew out a cylinder, 6 x 6, and shaped into a Minion leg shape, bending it in the middle for the kneecap. I then deleted the faces on the leg that was being jointed to the left-hand side of the waist. I also deleted a cluster of faces on the waist so that the leg could be attached. I then combined both the leg and the body and merged the vertices with the “Merge Vertices” tool.

 

Duplicate Special

After completing these 2 processes I deleted the right-hand side of the body, selected the remaining left-hand side of the body and selected “Duplicate Special”. This gave me a mirror image of the left-hand side of the body on the right-hand side and removed the need to create a right arm or leg. This considerably reduced the amount of work I had to undertake to complete my Minion. In order to correctly merge the 2 separate halves of the body I combined both of the objects. I then selected the vertices that were on the 2 adjoining sides and then selected “Merge Selected Vertices”, Know I had arms on both sides.

 

Arms & Legs

At this point I reconsidered how both my arms & legs would look when attached to the body. I wanted the attachment of the limbs to look smooth rather than flat or jagged. I only concentrated on left part of the body as I would “Duplicate Special” again. I selected the vertices around the body & limbs and moved them around until I was satisfied with the smoothness of the attachments.

 

Eyeball

The next body part that I made was the single eyeball. I started off by drawing out a sphere to the size of the minion eye. For this process I didn’t lower the poly count, placing the eyeball it roughly in the centre part of the head. The next step was shaping the pupil and to do this I selected the faces around the area of the centre & pulled inwards. At this point I chose the colouring of the eye, which was blue. I then selected the very centre of the eye faces and extruded inwards to create the eyes pupil which was black. Finally I created a sphere that went over the entire eye and then applied texture to it where I lowered the opacity and increased it glossiness to give it cartoon like image.

 

Eyelid

To create the eyelid I drew another sphere that was the same as the one I had used for the eyeball. I then deleted 3/4‘s of it, so that only a quarter was left. I then selected all of the faces and extruded them to add thickness to the eyelid. This was then duplicated to create the bottom half of the eyelid.

 

Hands

The next part that I worked on was the hands. To start this off I drew out a cube and scaled it to fit the arm. I drew out a cube and scaled it to fit the arm. I then drew 2 parallel lines on the cube from which I extruded the fingers. From this I created a smooth cylindrical shape which was symbolic of the Minions gloved fingers. I then curved the circumference of the gloved hand where the arm fitted into it. I also inverted the opening of the glove which helped to give it a more realistic look which was representative of a glove.

 

Goggles

I started the goggles off by drawing out a tube and brought it up to be level with the eye. I then expanded it so that it looked like it was wrapped around the head then thinned its diameter so that it looked more realistic. I added more line to the tube so that the band had a curve in it which made it look more realistic. The eye piece of the goggle was created using another tube that was made to fit neatly around the eye. To replicate distinctive features that I had seen I added more lines to the tube and scaled them down to create grooves in the eye piece. I then placed 8 small spheres equally around the tube to create a stud like effect. On the inside of the tube I selected certain lines and scaled them inwards to create an inverted curve. The next thing I did was to create the strap attachments which were placed on either side of the eye piece. This was achieved by having a small cylinder and placing a big cylinder above and beneath the small one. The lens for the eye piece was created using a flattened down cylinder placed on the inside of the goggle. I then applied a texture to it where I lowered the opacity to create a glass like feature.

 

Mouth

To create the mouth I deleted a line of faces around the front of the head. I created the hole of the mouth then grabbed the lines around the mouth and brought them closer together. I then extruded the edge and brought them inwards and made a curve to form the lips. After making the lips I moved onto the teeth giving the Minion 12 on the top and bottom. To do this I started with a cube, squashed it to be the width of a tooth and then add extra lines into make it smooth. Once I had perfected this initial tooth I created the rest of the teeth at the top and the bottom of the mouth. Following on from this I worked on the gums at the top and bottom of the mouth. To do this I took another cube and placed it under the teeth and extruded the ends around under the base of the teeth. I then add extra lines on the gums in line with the gaps of the teeth and pulled them up to fill the gaps, giving the gums a more realistic look. Once the gums at the bottom of the mouth were perfected I duplicated them for the top set of teeth. The Final object that I made for the mouth was the tongue which I again I started with a cube that I stretched out until it was the right size. I then added lines down the tip of the tongue to give it a smooth cylindrical end. Finally, I added a line down the middle of the tongue to give it the dent that can be seen on people’s tongues.

 

 

Hair

The hair was the trickiest part for me as it was difficult to get it right. I started off by making a Lego like head cap but I realised that doing it this way did not allow you to include a great deal of detail, like trying to create lines in the hair. So instead of this, I decided to make it with curved strips, which I created from cubes, which I attached around the head. I based the style on a YU-GI-OH hair piece, so you would have hair that would be all pointy and there were layers to it giving it more detail.

 

Clothes

With the clothes I went with the regular clothes that I wear and so made a shirt, jacket & pants. I started off by making the shirt, I selected the faces around the body where I would have my shirt & I then “Duplicated Faces” and extruded the faces to add a bit of thickness to it. I then selected the “Vertices” around the shirt and lined it up to give it a smoother look. I also added extra lines around the holes of the shirt to make it smooth. Having done the shirt I moved onto the jacket, making it in a similar way that I had created the shirt. I stretched it out to give it extra length and added a collar to it. Having covered the top half of the body I moved onto the bottom half. I selected the rest of the faces at the bottom, “Duplicated Faces”, and then extruded faces to give it thickness, which created the pants and covered the bottom part of the body. I then added extra lines around the bottom to make some creases around the bottom of my pants.

 

Texture

All the texturing was creating using Mia_pass which I then adjusted to give each item the look that I required as follows:

The body and eyelids were given an exact match to the reference material that I was using;

The shoes were given a black leather textured look;

The gloves were textured to look like the Minions;

The goggles strap was originally going to be black leather but I decided in the end to use brown to add more colour and contrast to my character; &

With the goggle itself I created a very shinny reflective surface to match the silver colouring used by the Minion character;

The teeth were made white but not entirely, they were given a shine, due to teeth having a moist & reflective surface, I textured the gums & tongue with the same texture with a dark red moist texture;

I textured the hair to be the same colour as my hair, I also added noise to it to add lines in the texture so it help made it look more like hair;

I textured my jacket to be like my leather jacket, so I wanted it black with a bit of shine, I textured my shirts like my green shirt which was a bland green and I textured my pants to be like blue jeans.

I wanted my eye to be like my eye so I textured it white, the eye colour to be blue with noise add to it to make it more real and the pupil black.

 

Rigging

The rigging was used to create the skeleton of the body. The jointing for this character was more specialised as it was a standard character. I placed my first joint around the waist and this was to be my root joint which was the central control point for all of the joints. Following on from this I created joints that would give me control over my hip, leg and foot movements on the left-hand side of the body. Then using a mirror process I copied them over to the right-had side. Above the root joint I attached 2 new joints one that gave me control over the hips and the other which gave me control over the upper part of the torso. To this joint I connected the shoulder, arm and wrist joints of the left arm. Again using a mirror process I copied this over to the right-hand side. The neck joint was then created and connected to the torso joint. Above the neck joint I created another joint (Mouth Control) which spawned out several joints to give control over the movement of the mouth, lips and teeth. Above the mouth control I placed another joint in the core of the Minions head. From this I spawned a joint to give me control over the eye movement and also one at the top of the skull.

 

Skinning

To start off the skinning process I selected the root joint and the body and then went to skin and selected smooth bind. This bound the skeleton to the body giving me control over the movement of the body. For the next stage I selected the body, went to paint, skin, weights and selected the root joint and then flooded it. Now the body is affected by the root joint only leaving all other joints none effective. This gives me a more precise way of painting skin weights affected by certain joints.

 

 

Referencing

 

Illumination Entertainment (2014) Minions. Available at:

www.imdb.com/media/rm2457270272/tt2293640?ref_=tt_ov_i (Downloaded: 30th November 2014)

 

Mercader, J.A. (2013) Minion Modelling. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJESazJYSnk&list=UURdtwlPg9vJ... (Accessed: 20th October 2014)

 

MoZella et al (2013) Wrecking Ball. United States of America: Sony Music Entertainment (Accessed: 20th October 2014)

 

Done