4/17/2022: Character Modeling Progress, Animatic, and Additional Duties

Now that I am back at modeling the Hunter, I finally made his head. After I modeled the head, I showed my team for some feedback before I put it in our files. I had to do some tweaking because making a level zero mesh may not look 100% perfect. While I saw how it looks, it looked like a narrow, alien-like shape head. I did some tweaking and clean up on the face. Here is my progress:

When I showed my head progress with the Huli Jing team, I had some feedback. Unfortunately, they told me to start a new project. The reason why I would have to start a new model is because my brow ridge was too flat and the neck might be in not in a right shape, It may be difficult for making adjustments. I will not throw away this head version I made because we might end up using ZBrush for sculpting the head. I realized that making characters can be changed from time to time. It is possible that I will have to keep working harder on character modeling during summer before Production II.

Character model art is what I am very passionate for. I always wanted to do character modeling ever since I started my first year here at University of Colorado Denver. It made me thought about being a character artist in the future. I may have no talent on drawing digitally like other illustrators and/or concept artists. From what I experienced for making character models, I used references of real life people because it has all the details of anatomy. Making 2D to 3D was the biggest challenge I ever done. I hope that in the future there will be improvement and this character piece will help me reach my goals on getting better at 3D character modeling.

Since I am focusing on this character piece and that I need improvement on the head, what is next is I will work on modeling the body of the Hunter. I have had experience on making character model from my previous semesters ago. I hope that this body will help me get caught up before this spring semester ends. If my body model gets done later on, I want to model the cloth of the character. Again, my teammates who are focusing on concept art and storyboarding are finding good historical references of the Ming Dynasty. If they need additional help on finding research of what cloth does the Chinese people wore on the Ming Dynasty era, perhaps I can help them since they are working so hard on making beats of the Huli Jing.

During our animatic critique day, my story team showed their updated beats. They worked so hard and put so much effort on creating the story. They are so talented at drawing and I personally wished that I have a talent at drawing digitally, but I do not draw well. Only traditional drawing such as drawing on paper I love to do that. While I have seen the story people's work, I feel we are following in a right direction because our main goal is to let the Uncle learn the lesson (it used to be the Neighbor, but now we changed to the uncle). We got some feedback with the professors and they say we should be aware on the Hunter's story versus the Uncle's story. Currently, my team are going to add more beats and update the beats that does not focus too much on the Uncle. I will be looking at their work and see if their beats are worth to show again for the next critique or if there is something we should fix or add for the Huli Jing story.

Over the past few weeks, my team and I discussed about the environment set up. Since we have been blocking, we have found some resources of the Ming Dynasty environment and housing. During the Ming Dynasty, there were courtyard houses. There were many rich and wealthy houses at that time, but for the Hunter, he lives in a forest and his house must be rural. We made a discussion of what we can do for the scene. We agree that we still make the Hunter's house in a rural way. We will make bamboo as our exterior design because bamboo was made and used a lot during that time in China. As I am part of the 3D modeling team, I want to support them while I work on character modeling. Because I want to do multiple duties such as character modeling and making environment, it will gain a lot of support with the team and a lot more time to finish making a scene. These jobs will be part of my responsibility and my goals.

Happy Easter!