CakeInferno
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Bunsen Introduction - Playblast
🕑 Added 2022-10-30 14:31:52 +0000 UTCHoh boy, this animation was quite something! I admittedly needed to start over with this after thinking I was just able to animate a dragon walking out of my head, oop! Fortunately there's a decent amount of reference material out there that helped me getting the movement of his legs and torso right, which were quite a bit more challenging to animate than I thought.
Luckily there's only very few scenes in this animation that require detailed animation of Bunsen's entire body, as I realized early on that his many limbs and controllers take a lot longer to animate than any regular humanoid character. Big kudos to NuttyMrGecky for the amazing rig, though! I'm hoping to get in touch with him some time next month to show him some gratitude!
I'm expecting progress to speed up quite a bit in the upcoming weeks and that we reach the nommy bits quite soon. My side project is finally completed, which means I'll have no more distractions for the next two months and can fully focus on animating.
Note that in the recent weeks I finally managed to find a voice actor for Bunsen who will lend our dragon his voice in this animation. He goes under the name Darkwitt and has lent his voice to many audio plays by Caudle, if you're familiar with their work. Darkwitt also does sound design and will likely take care of doing the sound in my future animations. He previously did the sound design for Hazbin Hotel, which I always found sounded excellent, so it's needless to say he's perfect for the job! It also takes some more work off my shoulders, as I've previously done all these things on my own.
Note that the Halloween animation won't be finished for Halloween, as there's still a lot to animate. I probably would've needed to skip the previous two mini animations to make the date, but I felt like I first needed a bit of practice with Bunsen's rig, as well as with Redshift, as this will be the first major animation that will use the new renderer. I'm hoping to have the animation finished somewhere around Christmas, but I might want to extend the vorish play by another scene, so I'll have to see how progress is going throughout the next weeks!
Chloé Reconsiderations
I had originally planned to have Chloé rigged this month, but after Autodesk required me buy a pricey second Maya license for 3 years, I needed to move these plans back towards the end of 2023 as I wanted to pay a professional rigger for this endeavor and money is currently a little tighter than expected due to a lot of unexpected bills throughout the recent months. This might however be a blessing in disguise, as this got me to think about the new model a little more and ultimately got me to the conclusion that Chloé would work much better as a completely new character, rather than a sister to Zoe who looks somewhat akin to her. Zoe will likely get another revision next year, but this time the changes to her model will only be very subtle and mostly just fix the issues the old model has.
To this day, I'm still receiving messages about bringing back the jackal character from one of my oldest animations. Sadly this isn't quite possible, as the character originally belonged to an old friend who had left the furry community, which is why I can't just reuse the design as it was. I've however been thinking about having a more anubian-style jackal character for the longest time (dark fur with yellow/golden accents), as the aesthetic always really appealed to me. And considering Chloé's side profile looks a lot more jackal than fox-like already, her model could be perfect for a character design like this. I had already planned to have a future Encounter episode play out in an Egyptian setting, and the thought of Space Hero fighting Chloépatra, the large anubian goddess is quite appealing to me, hah!
With my schedule freeing up again next month, I should definitely find some time to work on Chloé again. So far I've done a couple of tests of how she'd look with dark fur, and I have to say it suits her quite well. Once I have a few more updates on the model next month, I'll make sure to give you guys an update! :)
Comments
KingdomZanny
I'm on a mac and I've refreshed the page, it still registers as broken. :(
CakeInferno
Oh noes! Have you tried refreshing the page? The gifs are usually a bit large, which is why I'd recommend watching them on a PC over wifi.
CakeInferno
Glad to hear! I guess this is a good indicator that the animation accents are just right, aha!
CakeInferno
Very much so! I guess you can relate there! c:
KingdomZanny
The gifs appear to be broken!
Skye
there's no sound, yet I can hear the words being spoken in this sneak peak.
Ghostdragon
Ah yes, being a large, in charge and hungry dragon~
bcurrant
Glad to know you're still okay! Yeah, I can only imagine how tough the past few months have been, but I was just wondering if we're open to the option of crowdfunding if you ever need it ^^ Chloé's gonna appear in the next playblast? Ooh can't wait xD
Oxurus
I know you'll get her working flawlessly! I was hesitant about the new model, cause I didn't want her to look drastically different, but it now sounds like while she'll be getting a new model, she'll still look *almost* the same, just better ^^
CakeInferno
Yep, the Euro amount was even a bit higher, oop. But don't worry about it, you guys are already doing way more than I could've ever imagined! I luckily had a small amount of savings that cushioned the blow a bit, but they're almost fully depleted due to my company having a lot of bills to pay in recent months as well. It's one of the reasons why I took another project on the side, as the income that will come from it next month, combined with the Patreon earnings should help me paying a professional rigging artist and finally getting that long overdue render server to finally cut down the lengthy render times. (: Glad you're enjoying the anubian jackal idea as well! I'm hoping to show some progress on her along with the next playblast! <3
CakeInferno
Thanks so much! I've definitely been trying to improve my camera work, which I guess was previously a bit limited since I've been doing so many POV animations, haha!
CakeInferno
Glad you think so! I've always been in love with the aesthetic and can't say it's something that has already been done a million. Plus the golden tattoes will put her right in line with Zoe!
CakeInferno
Yeah, she's become incredibly clunky to work with, especially in the newer versions of Maya, where some controllers cause some issues and force me to work in a legacy mode that is incredibly slow to work in. An overhaul is sadly needed, but I'm certain this will eventually lead to much improved visuals once more. I'm still striving to hit that Pixar render target, aha! <:
CakeInferno
Super happy you like it so far! Can't wait to actually show rendered scenes of him or get to the nommy bits, haha! He's got one heck of a lot controllers, which can take a while to animate, but the result can be significantly better than what I could do with Zoe, which I only rigged on my own, hah!
bcurrant
I'm just wondering if you're open to us helping to crowdfund anything you need? I looked on Autodesk's webpage, and it says that a 3-year Maya license is like $5000 (good golly), so I'm wondering if you would like us to help fund it if you want ^^ Also, Chloé as an Anubian goddess is simply *chef's kiss* <3
Gibblet
I really love this already. The dragon slowly raising his head up as he approaches to show of their size and then snap forward together with the camera zooming in is such an incredibly intimidating effect. Really nicely done already!
Aeywon
A Jackal would be quite attractive, I must say!
Oxurus
Ooooh... Chloe being a jackal sounds really good! I'm glad that Zoe will remain recognizable as the same lass we know and love... though she admittedly does need a bit of an overhaul, just to make her a bit easier to work with xD Bunsen looks great, btw. I'm super excited to see how this turns out ^^
Disregard
Hot damn, Bunsen sure is looking fantastic. This one is gonna set one heck of a precedent above all other animations. It seems that circumstances are leading to some bigger ideas too! Despite the troubles you encounter, you certainly never fail to bounce back. I certainly know I can hardly wait!
CakeInferno
Haha, that's actually the way I animated him before, but it somehow didn't look right to me and caused some problems with overstretching the fore and hind legs. From what I gathered looking at animation references, quadruped dragon characters are often animated this way and are then using their tail as a balancer. For this sequence I mostly looked at this animation of an Ironbelly from Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows Part 2, for which the animator used a tiger walking as a reference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SVJb4_FIlg There's probably a number of ways to animate a dragon walking, for Bunsen I figured that this was the one that looked most natural, at least to my perception! <:
Tesla-The-Tiger
Excellent work so far, Cake! I love the way everything is playing out with Bunsen, and I'm so glad you chose to branch off and try other characters! On a side note referring to your concern with the leg movements, I do think that you should look a bit more into proper walking of quadruped characters, as it looks like Bunsen is lifting two paws on one side of his body to take each step, which would be awkward and unstable for a quadruped. I believe it would be more like (in terms of taking a step forward, for example), front right, back left, front left, back right. (If im not mistaken!) Please keep in mind I'm not trying to be hyper critical, just offering advice on one of your concerns! On a side side note, I hope we'll get to see some nice throat bulges and a nice belly bulge from our dragon here! <3 Either way, can't wait for the next update! Everything is looking great so far! ^^
