Dronema

July 2022 Update

Added 2022-08-06 22:16:54 +0000 UTC

Hello guys! I hope you are doing well! I am here with the Update of July!

Animation Course progress.

I did the "Blocking" pass?? for the Squirrel Idle.
In the course we used the jumping animation to start and finish, so the little squirrel stops and looks around, then sits back and as he's relaxed he gets curious and smells the air, then hears a noise and looks back towards the source, and starts running again!

I'm thinking of changing the pose where he looks back a bit, because the angles from which it reads well are very limited. It might be best to more closely follow the pose shown in the course. But after that it's ready for polishing!

Here's a YT Link to see the blocking pass!:
https://youtu.be/RPfhhePVacQ

Tekki.

Finally in the Rigging stage!! I've placed the deformation bones, the ones that influence the model directly, now I'm just doing the weight painting [or skinning].
There is a lot of back and forth in this stage, I keep making adjustments here and there: to the placement & quantity of the bones, and to the topology of the model too.

Biggest change so far was to fix the ears, they were going on a spiral instead of closed loops, and it was making the weight painting awkward.

This stage is so exciting! I can finally start posing her so now she's starting to feel alive, and having some provisional colors really helps too!

Also so far this stage is going way smoother than my last asura model attempt! I'm using a guide made by the Guilty Gear XRD team on bone placement, and that seriously removed so much guesswork, which is where I got stuck last time! And I've learned so much too about the why's and how to think about some stuff. I'm also referencing the weight painting of one of the rigs provided in the animation course!

The shoulders and hips are still intimidating, as well as the face! But I'm more confident this time too! And they are looking much better already.

Right now I've done a quick weight painting pass to the the whole character excluding the hair. And have focused on a few areas too. I think the ears, feet and boobs might be ready.

I've also focused a lot on the torso, especially the chest and hips, the crotch, the arms and legs, but they all still need adjustments.

I've barely touched the face, neck, shoulders and hands. Neck and Hands are working pretty well already, though I've realized that the bones on the thumb were not rotated correctly so I gotta fix that [I added some pics that show that]

PICS:

Showing the armature: Front, Side, Back, face closeup, crotch, and other parts.

2 poses.

3 pics showing the issue with the thumb and bone rolls.

4 pics showing a weird twist I'd like to fix with the legs.

3 pics showing the weight painting of the torso.

5 pics showing the weight painting of the hips and how it's influenced by the Hips, Leg and Butt bones.

[Sorry about some of the pics btw, there is a strange glitch that I'm not sure how to remove, where there appears weird line shadows. In some of the pics there is a line going from the hairband down to the side, I hope it's not too distracting.]

And there's a few pics from July's drawings, which I'll talk a bit more about in the Compilation post!

DOWNLOAD:

As usual there's a ZIP with all the Tekki pics! But you don't need to download it if you'll download the zip from the compilation post, since those are included.

I've also included the squirrel video this time. That one is not included in the Compilation zip.