"O" for Onward! (Please don't copyright strike me)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of productive quarantine! Allegedly, the stay-home order in Denver lifts in just over a week, but that does not change the fact that campus is closed, summer internships are cancelled, and all our lives are significantly impacted, whether emotionally, fiscally, other, or all of the above. That said, technology has really come in handy more than ever, and for the most part we have managed to stay productive, all things considered. And arguably even more importantly, I have managed to remain social, along with my friends and fellow group members, which has made a world of difference in realizing we are not alone in how we're struggling through this and experiencing the challenges of isolation and fear. There's solidarity, and being able to take a break from production and still enjoy each other's company through games or movie nights has sincerely boosted morale I believe. It certainly has for me, and gives me the motivation to keep pushing forward. I know this blog isn't necessarily about that aspect of production, but I think it's really important to acknowledge how myself and my group as a whole are handling this, and still pushing through.

So as my ability to remote access the university computers is still quite spotty, I have shifted my focus to concept art in order to keep producing something, even if it is just in a different production vein. So I drew some concept for our human characters; this model is our main reference for the non-binary main human.

With that in mind, this is what I put out for their design:

Obviously the left is essentially a carbon copy of the reference image, but it was a good starting point.

This was my first attempt at some dynamic poses, which are certainly a bit lackluster.

I got a tad more dynamic on the right, and emphasized the outfit, as well as bringing in Palmer, the zombie hand character.

And now, the S/O:

This was my main photo reference, namely for hair and the glasses. We are trying to normalize diversity in our short (the amount of reference for 3D characters that are black was severely lacking, which is upsetting), and personally I'm really excited for the hair simulation for the S/O! Here's what I drew out:

Once again with the carbon copy, but then from there I expanded my horizons a bit and was able to add variety to expression as well as explore a couple of outfit ideas.

Overall, thankfully my drawings landed well! There was some critique on avoiding gender binary colors on the non-binary character, and the overalls were immediately shut down as they were used in last year's short. However, everyone loved the yellow dress for the S/O, and just the S/O in general. The most intense overall critique was to soften the edges and shapes, and basically make our character look a bit more cartoonish. I did my best, and while it's not much I did produce these:

People were very happy, and I feel a bit better about things like eye and nose shape. I have more critiques moving forward, so this obviously is not the end. But my concept art has allowed our sculptors to have some reference to begin getting rough sculpts out for our humans.

To wrap up the drawings, I drew a character lineup to show our professors, as well as to get a sense of how the characters meshed together.

There's a reason I'm doing VFX, but this drawing did the job. I made the non-binary character's jacket jean rather than a bright blue, and our group has been going through several iterations of the Bat Vampire character; this is my depiction of our latest version. Discussions are currently being had as to whether or not we will be keeping "Batman", and whether Aldo will be made with fur or leaves. I have my own bias, but have no doubt that our group will succeed either way.

I know this post is already quite long, but allow me to show you really quickly the progress made on hair. I had a dumb scaling issue, but spent an entire day reworking the node network, fixing some VEX, and adjusting the grooming setup and plugin options. The node network is now plug and play; there are clear spots to put in static and animated meshes, and I have set up a version for people who want to groom that points out and explains which nodes they need, and how they work. I can then take their grooms and adjust as needed for the simulation. It's working much more efficiently now and I feel significantly more confident about how it will mesh into the pipeline.

Hopefully this makes it clear as to why I need others to be in charge of groom, but despite that the hair is looking significantly more realistic. The above is wispy, and I added grooms underneath; the below is lower res. and shows some blockyness on the separate grooms, as I foolishly rendered out the first frame, so the hair hasn't simulated and relaxed yet.

This is a rough render of a lower-res simulation - it shows a bit of bounce, but is still quite an improvement.

Okay, I've already written a novel of a post, so if you've made it this far congratulations! Moving forward I'll be shifting to doing some R&D for Vellum cloth simulations in Houdini and seeing if that is the best option for our short. I need a break from hair.