Geeking Over Movie Trailers

At long last I am making progress on the rigging of my CGI character Dripbird.  As of this writing he has controls to make him blink, look at things, raise/lower his crest, bend his neck, lean his body back and forth, and move his legs and feet.

Screen-cap of Dripbird rigging in progress.  The control shapes are a little hard to see.

I am still not happy with the controls for the legs and will probably re-do them (It is not unusual for me to repeat a step 3 or 4 times before deeming it worthy of keeping).  This build continues to be a lesson in problem-solving and info-gathering as I am doing this on my own time and without the guidance of a professor.  That, and all my old text-books only show how to rig characters with plantigrade feet.  They do not address how to rig a digitigrade character, which seems to be a horrible omission considering everything from horses to cats to dinosaurs walk on their toes.

I also re-did the UVmap for Dripbird because that's another thing I was unhappy with (and I do believe this was my 3rd go at UVmapping this character.)  With all the mapping I've been doing lately, the new map for Dripbird was relatively quick to assemble.  It took somewhere between 11/2 to 2 hours to complete, which might be a personal record for mapping on a character this complex (mind you I had also hit the "smooth" command already, so there was 4x as many polygons to deal with as well).

A render of Dripbird standing in a very harsh lighting (sorry about that).

In other news, I've become fascinated with 2 movie trailers, both large-scale CGI stories: Epic and Rise of the Guardians.  Rise has got me the most interested of the two, which requires some analysis because I hate holiday movies.  Ok.  I don't actually hate them, but I seriously dislike them because they tend to be simplistic, cheesy, predictable, and impart empty aesops.

But look at the trailer for Rise of the Guardians.  Seriously, go click the link, I'll give you a few minutes.

You back?  Good.

Holy cow! This is freakin' awesome!

I shall make a list:

1. Jack Frost's character design is a barefoot kid in a hoodie.  Instantly likable.
2. The Easter Bunny is Australian.  It took a day or two of pondering before it totally makes sense. (But it totally makes sense.)
3. Santa is a more traditional European "Father Christmas".  A big, burly lumberjack dude with a thick accent and a big fur coat.  Much cooler than a fat guy in red saying "Hohoho."
4. They appear to be fighting a guy who gives kids nightmares.  Nighmares.  Not "threatenting to cancel Christmas".  Not a story about "that one kid who didn't get what he wanted under the tree".  No.  A guy who invades kid's dreams and turns them into visions of 4 horseman and hellhounds.  An actual super-villain in a holiday movie.  Now this I've gotta see.

As for Epic.  Well, I have to admit it's visually beautiful, but I think 90% of the awesome comes from the sound-track.

Earworm of the Day: The Lightning Strike: Part I by Snow Patrol