Responsive: LoopDeLoop-Cute (And my attempt at 3D modelling)

This month, as a part of my individual practice for Responsive I have chosen to do another animation for LoopDeLoop. The theme is 'Cute'; not something I'd normally do for an animation, which is why I have chosen to do it. Having looked at some of the submissions which have already published on the LoopDeLoop website for this month, the main underlying theme unsurprisingly is that they all seem to depict sugary, colourful characters in cute situations. Being the person I am I have decided that for my animation I want to subvert some of these themes in order for my submission to stand out.

My initial idea for this brief was to show a compilation of cute characters, moments from danger as to detract from their cute demeanour. Example of this I had thought about include a hamster drinking out of a bottle labelled toxic or a child about to fork an electrical socket. In the end I opted to develop the first option, as I felt the latter would have crossed the line a little bit. I drew up a concept for my animation in Photoshop shortly after, using a green and orange complimentary colour scheme and a vector-like artstyle, with the intention of animating the final character using DUIK. 

However, I did toy with the idea of modelling, rigging and animating the character in Maya. I have never used Maya to create and animate a character from scratch before and thought I'd use this opportunity to accustom myself to the tools in order to gain a better understanding for use in the future. However, after showing some more experienced Maya modellers and animators an early render of my character's head I opted for the 2D option over 3D. The way in which I went about modelling the character, I heard from my tutors and my peers, did not necessitate the rigging process and would have made it extremely difficult for a beginner. My wireframe had too many subdevisions and the surfaces weren't consistent across all axis', as this was my first time modelling a character in Maya for myself using my own reference imagery, which I had imported ono the stage in the form of an image plane in order to ease the modelling process. 

From David O'Reilly's 'The External World' 

I had wanted to emulate the style and design of one of my favourite CG animators, David O Reilly, who creates surreal animated sketches with what appear to be fairly simple character rigs. However, I learned through doing it myself that his rigs are deceptively more complex than they appear. I also learned that O'Reilly makes use of light sources on the Maya stage in order to give his characters a more cartoony style by ensuring they are well lit from all angles, so they don't cast any self shadows. I tried to emulate this effect my lighting the model I did by lighting my character using multiple directional lights set up around the Maya stage, and the final effect comes fairly close to what I was trying to emulate.

As for the final submission which I did end up submitting on time for LoopDeLoop, I used DUIK in After Effects to create a short looping GIF of the Hamster drinking from the bottle. There was very limited movement, with the only real points of articulation being the legs, arms and tummy, however I feel the design of everything as well as how it moves and loops more than makes up for that. I just hope in the future that one of my Maya endeavours ends with me producing some kind of finished product.