Super-hyped about the opportunity!

Thank you, Reallusion (and the rest of the sponsors!)!

I've decided to work on two entries. One will be with characters and assets from the game / interactive novel I'm developing, and the other will be a movie scene recreation I'm starting from scratch. I'll be working on them in parallel and I'll post updates here to keep myself honest.

Feedback is absolutely appreciated. I'm a writer who is brand new to animation (and loving it) and for me this is primarily a learning process... though I do appreciate the carrot too!

For all voices, I'll be using Replica. I've started with the voicing of the movie scene I'm replicating, and here's one of the lines (stage and character are VERY rough stand-ins):



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I've reached a point where the more I tweak the details, the worse they get. So it's time to wrap up my entry. =D

Here is the final version of my first entry:



And here is the final version of my second entry, which ended up not being from the game I'm developing:

Slowly working my way through the first rough pass of my entry, I figured I'm overdue for an update.

Here's current state of character:



And here's the current state of the stage:




I'm still learning a ton as I go along (I just messed around with particles, yay!), so I'm moving on timelines worthy of glaciers, but I'm having fun. Anyway, current state of first, very rough pass of project... about halfway there!

Another update!

Full scene is now roughed in. Next to do: everything else...

Nice... Esp. as you are a "rookie". 
Try to smooth your animation a bit, saw some harsh movements.

Toystorylab on Vimeo :     Crassitudes (my "Alter Ego") on Youtube: 

Thanks! It's what I'm fighting with right now--smoothing out the animation and trying to make it a little more natural-looking. It's so finicky since I'm doing it all by keyframes (if there's another way that doesn't involve mocap, to which I have no access, please let me know!). Still having a ton of fun, because honestly, I didn't expect to be able to get even this far!

Final (for now) version:

And with this... time to start on what I hope is the next entry!



Edited: I couldn't condense this conversation anywhere near the 30 seconds limit, so I've abandoned this idea, and onto the next...

So, my next idea, which is think may prove viable...

The character is called "The Curse" (well, he calls himself that), and he's the protagonist from my personal IP, a novel called "He Who Dies." This is an intro monologue written specifically for this clip.

I started by creating an approximate look of the character in 2D, focusing on the texture and shape:



I then used Headshot to import the face into Character Creator. After some tweaking:



I still have to learn to do hair (I already have a tutorial bookmarked, this is next), so I decided for this clip to stick with one of the stock hairstyles, which actually fit the character pretty okay too. However, this character's skin is supposed to look kinda nasty: bruised, stained, almost "wormy" in places. It also beads moisture, so it's super-shiny. I was able to handle the shininess in Character Creator, but for the texture, I needed to do more. I first tried to edit the textures in Photoshop, but I wasn't getting the results I was going for. Then I decided to try out Substance Painter... and that did the trick!

So I now had a character base that was pretty close to how I wanted the character to look (the clothing was still not there yet, of course):



I still needed had some touching up to do, but I decided to handle that in Photoshop, after I accessorized him.

For that, Reallusion's Assassin resources were perfect. And thus I had my character more or less good to go:



Then, it was time to generate the voice. I'm a big fan of Replica Studios, so I was already determined to use one of their voices. I experimented with a few, but settled for Deckard at the end. Deckard is a solid voice with a few options for intonation, and was able to pull off the feel of the character well.

Finally, it was time to start on the scene itself.

I had already decided I'd use KitBash3D's Medieval Marketplaces kit, and quickly found the perfect prefab that allowed the character to walk between a bunch of tents and barrels. I touched up a few textures, but otherwise mostly left the scenery alone. I added a tree and a stone to add a bit more organics to the scene, eventually picked out an angry sky, and then proceeded to work the character into the set.



I still had a ton to do on this, obviously from atmosphere/lights, to camera, to animation, to adding more characters and details...

Now, I originally had imagined there being other characters (I had even created them in Character Creator). I even used the obstacle avoidance animation from Reallusion's Assassin motion set with the idea the main character is walking around someone, and I really liked the cadence of motion and speech.

Once I added the first extra, however, I realized my computer wouldn't be able to render the final thing (that was on top of my experience with my first entry, where I spent about a week rendering two low-poly characters with basically textured blocks around them). So, I nixed the idea of extra characters, even if I were pretty happy with how some of them came out. For example:



But that was that.

However, I really wanted to add more dynamics to the scene. Well, in the novel, this character has neat vision with which he sees stuff others can't see, including magic as a visible entity. So came the idea to pull these in. So came the lights.

I wanted to keep the character motion through the scene as is, so I just placed the lights appropriately.

Then I animated in the shifty eyes, and the rest of the time I spent with Acculips to adjust the lip sync.

And I have now officially completed my second entry... Yay!

Anyway, without further ado: