Sunday, March 11, 2007

Have You Seen My Rabbit....?



With my focus on animation, I've forgotten to post some pictures of my rabbit. In Life Drawing Workshop we get to create our own character and then sculpt/mold it into a 3D Structure. I've been working on it since February and it's finally finished. Unfortunately for you readers, you'll have to wait a week or so until I finish up my roll of film to see the finished product. But I do have a few sketches and development shots to show. So here are two of the concept sketches:



As you can see, this is no fluffy bunny. This thing is beast. It's design has shifted, but here's it's back story:

In another 30 years the human race will be pushing the planet to a breaking point. The constant thirst and hunger of the human race will bring terrible changes to the planet. Droughts will leave water levels bare, the reshaping of the land will cause it to loose its rich textures and alter the climate resulting in fires, mudslides and more. The population will continue to climb past what the world can handle. Most of the jobs will be taken by robots and thousands of people will be thrown into the streets as one of the biggest economic crashes happens. Some scientists seeing this problem decide to find a way to slim down the population. Paid by rich employers, the scientist create the perfect killing machine, Experiment-457. With the keys to DNA being unlocked as we speak the scientist begun to slice genes of several animals to create the Experiment. It's mission is to be set free during the night and feed upon the homeless people. It's quick metabolism completely burns off all the energy within a short time, leaving the creature to rest during the day after it's feast. It's long ears and slim body have tiny little hairs which can sense the slightest movement and can help it predict it's pray or foe's movement. On one outing the Experiment broke into a house and devoured a family while being captured on webcam. The creature then got away from it's masters and is now running rampant, finding a dark lair to sleep in at night. How long will this threat last?

Hollywood, my e-mail is in my profile. Hint.

Anyway, here's the steps I went through:

First I did about 3 hours of straight drawing, just quick drawings to get ideas out. I came up with the idea after looking at the shirt I was wearing, the mad bunny, a shirt for the band Jakalope. ( http://www.jakalope.net ) After the sketch was done I tweaked the design a bit more. After that I got my Dad to create an armature base. My Dad made it out of pipe and it was tough getting the pipes separated to make the armature shorter. Once the Armature was ready I cut up 2 metal coat hangings and got the glue gun and paper clips and created a skeleton structure (seen below, top). By the way, be careful with coat hangers, they cut bad.... I put blood and sweat into this project...
After the structure was ready, I covered it in tin foil and glued it together. The tin foil helps flesh out the body structure so I don't use a ton of Sculpey on it(see below, bottom) . If you use Sculpey, make sure you have hand lotion ready because it sucks the moisture out of your hands.



So there you have it, the beginning of my rabbit. Sorry for the first picture, kind of hard to see the wire frame body. My rabbit stand 25 inches tall. Wahahahahaha. When people see it they think of Frank from Donnie Darko and think it's so cool. People who haven't heard of Sculpey always touch it. I've had at least 6 people touch it already. Stop by here in a week to see more picture of Experiment-457.

Why 457? It was my grade 8 locker number, and I like the number.


Anyway, more animation time! Yeah! I took some advice given to me on the Digimill.net forum and shaved a good 15 seconds off my animation and cleaned up some more curves. Still a bit to go, but it's getting there. The new body is getting closer to replacing Robot head. And look, even more camera angles! Critiques are welcomed.



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