Arthur animation update

Today I had a quick look at options for creating the landscape for my animation. Previously I looked at using Digital elevation models of the Edinburgh, Arthur's Seat in particular, and putting them into Vue. I then found that it would probably be a lot easier by simply creating an Arthur's seat lookalike in Maya by sculpting a NURBS plane as it will only be viewed in two shots at the most. For the sky i may either use view to make a HDR map or simply download a royalty free image.

As for the story, it was suggested that perhaps the scene showing the bayonets was perhaps too sudden for an opening scene at it would be better lead into it from another. Instead I am thinking of having Arthur cooking and while chopping up some vegetables, the knife reminds him of his bayonet and prompts the flashback to the bayonet-on-the-rack frame shown in my storyboard and animatic.

Today I have also started to model some of the props for the scenes. I have started modelling the bench in the scene where Arthur converses with Merlin. This is the bench as it looks so far and I will update again as I progress.

Arthur character design

Having settled on the story and completed both the storyboard and the animatic, I started the character design for Arthur, which will also be the base model for other military men in the animation.

I first started to design the face as I prefer to design the face first before the body.

 Then after designing the body to have a stalky frame, I decided that the face looked a little too young and redesigned it accordingly.

Coloured versions will be available with a side view in due course, along with character designs of Merlin before modelling in Maya.