Chipmonk Model
This is a first pass at the Chipmonk model for my Solomon Fix short.
I love the sculpt and expression of the mouth, but I thought the blood-shot eyes made the little guy look not so little. Because there are actual monsters in this short, I can’t have the most horrifying thing be a chipmonk. The hair has some strange light-sourcing on it so we’re looking at that too. But there he is, The Chipmonk. We’ll use this model for both chipmonks since they are twin brothers.
My goal is for the drawing to really play into the model and the sweeping gesture of the line-work is still present in the 3D chipmonk. Success! It’s a lot like inking a pencil drawing, you don’t want to lose the gesture of the cartoon in your clean-up…(for more comic inking tips check out this article I wrote on inking my comic). There was a time when the clean-up artist at Disney wasn’t just some person who traced lines. Often the best artist did the clean-up because they present the final and best graphic image. I think the same goes for 3D artists…the new separation between the men and the boys goes to the 3D guy who can maintain the feel, sweep and gesture of a drawing in his model.
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On March 13th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Doug man, i love the 3d guy! I esp. love the crooked teeth and tongue. Lookin good man, keep it up! -Steve
On March 13th, 2006 at 12:00 am
That’s one scary chipmunk. Perhaps he’s had one espresso-flavored acorn too many?
On March 13th, 2006 at 12:00 am
hey doug! this is great! i’m kinda behind on tennapel news and don’t know much about the solomon fix new characters, but i think this design holds true to your style. 3d has spawned a lot of awkward characters, and its nice to see one that’s balanced well, even if it looks totally possesed [donkey?]! i sit next to an ex disney guy at work right now, and he told us all about the work heirarchy. and you’re totally right about the clean up guys! the people who do cleanups do all the difficult drawing stuff, everone under them keeps it pretty rough to get motion down. figuring out how to translate that cleanup into 3d is totally important! keep crankin out the awesome man!
On March 13th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Oh thanks for the nightmares
Seriously tho, props to the 3d guys, he looks like he’s going to dash forward and eat my soul!
On March 14th, 2006 at 12:00 am
man~that’s funny
On March 14th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Wow. Are the backgrounds going to be done in a similar style?
On March 14th, 2006 at 12:00 am
I don’t know if it’s the same style, but we’re going for a rich children’s book feel.
On March 14th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Hey Doug, if that’s a Maya model (and even if it isn’t), your hair needs to have some sort of growth map to tell it where to put the shorter hair (like right next to the mouth) and where to put the longer hair (like on elbows, shoulders, middle of back, etc). I’m not sure what look you are after, but I just thought I’d mention that.
Also, the lighting may be due to the shadow map size on the lights. If the CG guys are using Shave for the hair, you need to use a pretty focused spot light to get the lighting to work right. Also, there is a setting to mix between ambient or actual scene lighting. It looks like some of the hair lighting issues in this early test could be due to some of that.
It’s looking pretty good… keep going!
On March 14th, 2006 at 12:00 am
Thanks for the good advice, I’ll pass that along to the team. I never know when something is submitted as final-final or when they’re just presenting work in progress where they know they still have some fine tuning to do.
On March 14th, 2006 at 12:00 am
That chimpmunk is gonna replace the whale in my nightmates. Awesome.