Johnny's Truck Update

Hey! I've been working on Possession story and I showed it to my uncle, because after a while of working with the story, I can start becoming blind to it. I see the story in my head, to me it makes sence, but to someone else, it might be the best. So, I start working blind on stories, until I get input from a new pair of eyes. I showed to him, but haven't really talked about it yet and he sugggests it needs work. So, hopefully, I can get with him soon and discuss it.

In the meantime, I'm working on a some other projects, including my elf short film, which I haven't made any further progress on yet and my Adventures with Johnny the Ferret short with him driving. I've been modeling a car, and have since made improvements to, almost done modeling.. at least for now, until after animation. The challenge would be rigging it. I want to make it a cartoony car, which means squash and stretch capabilities.

Heres what the truck looks like so far:

 I want to keep under the hood simple, since it's cartoony, but still looks like 'under the hood.' This is probably the most challenging part of the vehicle.

Possession Animatic, Johnny's Truck, Lord Chamberlain

I've been working on animatic for Guilty Conscience. Something about it I didn't like. It was missing something that the original idea had. So, I've made a lot of changes to the story and have went back to original story concept with some newer ideas incorporated into this story.
The name of the story has changed from Guilty Conscience to Possession (working title). In this story, Phillip is now a younger guy, a minor living with his parents in a house they just moved into. They have a fight and he sneaks a drink. He hears a noise, which leads him to a locked up cellar. He breaks the locks and goes in. The bust comes to life and encourages him to touch the crystal ball. He does so which sparks chaos around the cellar. He later finds out, that he actually signed a contract, which leads him to being possessed (think of the Exorcist). His parents come down and finds him deformed and he starts climbing the wall and jumps towards them.

Story still needs to be written up better, need a script, camera angles needs adjustments, missing a few shots here and there. I use storyboards simply as a guide for myself.


I've also been thinking about another short film, on top of this one and the elf short. Is using my character Johnny in a driving short film. I've been making a truck model, using a 50's Chevy truck as a reference. The reason why I chose a truck, cause my vehicle is a chevy truck and the character just seems that he would have a truck, he's an adventurer and curious; he's more likely to go off-roading.

Recently I've been working on a still life. Lord Chamberlain, Skeksis from the Dark Crystal. It was a learning experience, it was the first time I've messed with Mudbox in a while. I modeled a base head in Maya, then imported into Mudbox and subdivided about 4 or 5 times and added a lot of wrinkles. I've heard from many that I'm doing it wrong, that I should only subdivide after I finish adding the wrinkles, then move to the next substep. For me, though, it's easier to just get a high poly model and work on the details. It's easier for me to visualize and see what I'm doing. I also painted the texture, which the UV layout is nothing more than an auto UV layout. Turned out good though, colors are a little less saturated that I would like it, but it fits the character though.

Phillip Rig

The Phillip rig is complete. It's combination of the rig for Johnny and the mermaid. He has a stretchy leg, but no stretchy arm. Doing the mermaid, I ran into a lot of problems and havent quite figured out a solution. With the mermaid I used a condition node to work the scaling of the joints. For the most part, it did work, but had some hiccups where the arm would be bent, when it should've been straight. Thinking about it now, I might be able to work it using scale constraints, but haven't tried it yet.
He has IK/FK arms, only IK legs, no reason to have FK for this project. Has a flexiplane spine, manual facial controls, as well as blendshapes.

I recently watched Secret Window, with Johnny Depp, and started noticing a bit of similarities, specifically when Phillip throws something at the TV, saying 'leave me alone!' So, I want to go back and change the story a bit. Possibly going back to some of my original ideas which reflected more about becoming demon possessed. Don't know if I should just incorporate some of the ideas, or just go back to the story. In which case, I would probably need to change the character a bit.

What I still need to do is: 1. modify the story 2. make any neccessary changes to Phillip to better suite the story 3. create a proxy for animation 4. do color tests