Early Animation Tests

Side wireframe, back, and front perspective views of the first scene where Max’s father enters their banana shop. When I animated the walk, it was a bit fast so I ended up slowing the speed down in After Effects. Now it looks too slow. He needs more secondary motion and monkey-like movements.

Max’s New 3D Design

Experimenting with realistic lighting in final gather…here’s Max’s new look!

Pre-viz Animatic

Over the winter break I was able to meet with my thesis advisor, James Fisher. We discussed the importance of a pre-viz animatic. At the moment I have a rough 3D animatic, with each shot set up. This gives me a good feel for what objects need to be in the scene, their placements, and camera positions/angles.

Each of these shots is organized so that Maya references the geometry and rigs from original work files. This way, a chance to character geometry can be made in the original work file and it will change down the pipeline to the scene file, instead of copying and pasting.

Warning, the animatic is VERY rough!

Early Facial Expressions

The following clip just shows some early experiments with blend shapes and eye blinks with Max’s face (done in December). From this I know his mouth needs to have more geometry so I can easily open/close and maybe add more of an actual eye-socket so his blinks look a little bit more realistic.

Banana King Animatic (Version 2)

The story begins with Max’s father tending to their family banana shop while Max is busy working on a colorful, fantastic, cityscape mural. He paints with spray paint on his stone canvas, but is rudely interrupted by his father to return to his responsibilities in the shop. Max paints his signature monkey king on his mural and angrily stomps inside the shop. His father orders him to price and stock the new shipment of bananas. Max wishes he was outside working on his mural. As he looks outside at his masterpiece, his father immediately pulls down the window shade to block this distraction.

The next day, Max is reading his favorite graffiti magazine “Graffunky” at the front counter of Banana King. Several boxes of unpriced and unstocked bananas sit on the counter. His fuming father approaches Max with his teeth and fists clenched. He begins to unleash his frustration on Max and yells at him to price and stock the bananas. He picks up a banana and throws it during his temper tantrum. The banana ironically boomerangs back towards him, hits him on the head, and knocks him to the floor. Max laughs at his father’s clumsy fall, which only makes his father angrier. As he pulls himself up from the floor, he rips “Graffunky” into pieces and orders Max to get back to work. He runs outside to destroy and paint over his mural with white paint. Max grows livid and decides to rebel against his father and “tag” each of the bananas in the store. He prices and tags, and prices and tags. After tagging all of the produce in the store, customers arrive and he sells them the bananas with his signature on them.

A week later, the mail arrives with a newspaper (“Primate Post”) and magazine (“Graffunky”). The newspaper raves about Banana King’s unique bananas and branding and the magazine claims Max’s “vandalism” is the new fad in the graffiti world: Produce Tag! His father notices the monkey king tags on his bananas and grows angry because he thinks their products are ruined. Max shows him the paper and he realizes the shop is famous and they will be rich. He stops criticizing Max and celebrates because they will be rich. He walks away as Max continues reading about his new and famous role in the world of “Graffunky”.

Max in 3D

Early stages in Max’s development. Texturing and accurate skin weighting need to be adjusted.

Max in 3D

Still needs textures…working on his walk cycle. 

Father

Just modeling the head to attach to already modeled body.  

Jamie Hewlett

Jamie’s most commonly known for his illustrations for the music group the Gorillaz. I admire his funky style and referenced his images when creating my characters. The following illustrations were done for the modern opera adaptation of the traditional Journey to the West monkey king story.  

Max – New Design

Max’s new design is made to reflect an edgier, modern look to go with his interest in graffiti art.