So to start off,
it's very important that we know what kind of character we are going to create.
The first thing we already kind of know that is
inferred by the title of this course is the style.
But what exactly do I mean when I refer to stylized instead of cartoony,
it's really important to know that the art style
and detail level will also inform the animation style.
So cartoony and overly simplified characters can be more forgiving and easier
to create since they can behave and animate and strange and absurd ways
without seeming odds.
The style and animation can be snappy and absurd and
it still totally works since it's so far detached from reality
that it's easier to get away with not being realistic,
overly realistic characters on the other side
need high attention to detail and anatomical accuracy
and I know the footage in the background is also live action,
but all CG elements still need to fit in.
And if you have CG characters that are supposed to be realistic,
then it's even more important that these mesh well with everything else.
If it's not fully faithfully realistic, there will be a sense of uncanny valley.
Uncanny valley is basically when something appears to be real,
but small differences in the details or in the motion make it seem creepy and alien.
Think of the Androids that look and talk like they seem real,
but once they really start moving their faces,
you immediately notice that something is off and it comes off as really unsettling.
If you're interested in more of this topic.
I can recommend to watch the talk by the ltte amazon called
the illusion of animation that he gave at the blender conference.
He gives a more detailed explanation on the overall thought experiment
and
how to manage the different styles from,
from really cartoony to style is too abstract or realistic.
I added the link in the description so check that out if you're interested.
But my goal for this character is to show you how to
strike a middle ground to create a stylized but believable and grounded character
apart from the general style.
We also need to figure out what the character itself should be.
So simple questions like ethnicity, gender, age time period occupation
attitude.
You can basically go wild with this.
But to give an example,
this is basically what I came up with for the character of Rain.
So she's obviously a black woman young adult roughly present
time but I intentionally left the occupation and attitude ambiguous.
This basically allows her to be placed into many different scenarios.
This was pretty important in this case since the character Rain will
be made available and heavily used for the upcoming animation course.
But for your character, I'd suggest you you make them much more clear cut,
which will make them also more interesting
if you already have a kind of predefined emotional state and
just in general what the character is supposed to be.
But even though I say go wild, try to create something that can actually move
for that, we should set some healthy limitations.
So for example with my character,
I made sure that the character will be easier to rick and animate by
choosing relatively tight clothing that won't need
simulation or just additional rigging to happen.
I also decided to go for mesh hair.
So all the hair is completely modeled instead of using hair particles
and this is overall just easier to handle in terms of animation and also
rendering because I wanted to make the
character very optimized for vieux port display.
So that's what you see is basically what you get,
what will be rendered in the view port. Either in the view port trading or even in E. V.
Is going to closely represent the finished result in cycles.
I also early on decided to go with a ponytail,
which is a good example of creating simple
follow through animation for the animation course.
But
again you can go for a totally different hairstyle and add a lot more detail to it,
especially when you don't plan to animate the character.
If it's just supposed to be for a single pose,
it's going to make your job much more easier on deciding what
are your limitations.
I also decided to keep all the materials and textures rather simple and stylized
to fit with the character model and view port shading
so that there's not a stark difference between them.
These things were all planned early on to keep the overall scope focused,
but it's not just about limitations on an animation and rigging.
If you're planning on adding burning armor, plating sounds great,
but if the limbs can't even move a little because the plating
is just covering all of the joints in a weird way.
Or if you can't render the fire or if there's
some other limitations on how to make the fire look good
and it's too complicated or expensive, then um, maybe add some more compromises.
Maybe go for something a bit more simple, but once you have a plan in mind,
it's time to go to the next task, which is
doing a bit of research.