The human body is a complicated thing; one of the many reasons why I hesitate about drawing people. Nothing illustrates the amazing functionality of ourselves like trying to make a CG short with a human character, even a cartoony one. For the last half a semester, I've been working on a character named "Banjo Guy". Yes, that's what he's called, so says I. He's a 10-year-old-ish kid with a floppy cowboy hat, red Converse, and a banjo that he's still learning how to play. Through the creation and animation of Banjo Guy, I've learned a few things:
- Thumbs are really hard to re-create.
- The hip joint, likewise hard to animate so that it doesn't collapse on itself.
- Oh, and shoulders, shoulders are hard to make too.
- Arms are a lot longer than you might think. My finger-tips reach to mid-thigh, but Banjo Guy's only make it to his hip joints. This creates problems with posing (he looks like he has his hands on his hips when he shouldn't) and also makes it difficult to perform motions like getting up from the ground (he has to lean waaaayyyy back to lean on his hands).
- A character's just a statue until you rig up the eye controls. When you do, you'll suddenly have a living character on your hands. Possibly the most thrilling moment in the rigging process.
- Eyebrows can only do three or four different things (up, down, or one of each); mouths are a little more mobile, but still limited. It's the pairings between what the mouth's doing and what the eyebrows are doing that give us the fantastic range of facial expressions. Good news for CG characters like Banjo Guy.
At the moment, the best I have to show for my several months of work is this video:
I'm looking forward to summer. It can't come soon enough.
