Sunday Progress Report (Patreon)

What's been going on this week? Otter rebuilds and more animation blocking 

Rebuilding the Otter. During the first part of the week I went through a period of poor sleep (no idea what's caused it) which has lead to several days where concentration was not optimal. thankfully sculpting, rigging and weight painting (for me at least) can still be done even when half asleep so a good chunk of the first half of the week was spent rebuilding the otter and not wasted fighting to animate whilst tired. 

It's been nice to go back and work on a character and bring to bear a years worth of improvements ^_^ The little otter Aaron has been given a nice round of TLC, as you can see in the quick renders attached I've cleaned up and refined the sculpt tail and hands are now correctly positioned for rigging, his feet and hand paws have had some time spent on the sculpt. I've also optimized the rig and naming conventions used to run with scripts I've built in the interim so that should anything be amiss a rebuild can be conducted quickly with minimal amount of work. (He's not quite animation ready, still needs texture work to be done on the nose and mouth, and a groom added to make him nice and sleek)

Animation Blocking, The latter part of the week sleep was a lot better so all additional time was spent in blocking. I've included some 4K stills (still trying out lighting configs) and WIP viewport playblast cuts. Reminder these are early animation tests and certainly no where near final. I've included a few camera angles and still not decided on how this section will be cut together. Implemented a tummy bulge (let me know what you think) and more fine tuning of the settings for the dynamics with an idea to give everything movement and prevent the 'floaty' look some things had. (still needs work but I definitely think it looks better) along with continuing blocking I'll be running this stretch (heh) of animation through full rendering overnight this week to make sure the fur looks ok on the tummy during motion.

The following week will be spent expanding and refining what I've got so far animation wise.

Side activity for this week as chosen by the Executive Producers is more animation. I'll be looking at putting more time into the 'Basted otter' anim and hopefully have a rough cut by next Sunday.     

I do like hearing from you, so if you have any comments about the work let me know ^_^