Katerin Mladenov

Although the desired outcome of my major project was not as planned, I felt like it was also one of my most successful projects yet. It showed me where my weaknesses lie and also made me want to explore more of what I wanted to do when uni was over. I would not say the project was the best it could have been but this was due to my weaknesses that stemmed from other projects before it.  One of these weaknesses stemmed from the original Premise project, I felt that this was because of a lack of knowledge when it came to storytelling and how to go about creating an intricate piece of, story. During this project, the pressure I felt from not having an artistic background would at times leave me not working and avoiding it completely. I feel like the decisions I made back then are what shaped my major project into the unfinished piece it is now. Due to this at times, during my major project, I felt that I wanted to go back and start from scratch and redo my project. With the knowledge, ...

The concept of the project was based around a son who visits his old family home, in which he remembers his past and the hard work his father did over the years looking after him as a single parent The original outcome for this project was to create a 2 - 3 minute short film based around the idea of memories and a character visiting his family home remembering the good old times. The agreed outcomes were for me to have 3 modeled and rigged characters with a finished and textured environment. With this, I was to create a short animation or a number of animated pieces for a short film. Premise Submission Minor Submission

After Posting my first renders with my scenes lit I decided to screen turn around sets for each of my rooms. During this time I reworked the lighting for each room and also decided to implement it into the first scene I posted. Here are some of the renders I finished.

Here is a quick look at my fully textured dolls house originally I created the house as a floating object in space but in order to give it some size and relevance to the environment around it I placed it on a table with a vase next to it for a size comparison this gives the viewer something to compare the miniature scale of the house to and also with the camera focal length set to 75 it finished the look completely. With the time remaining until the deadline, I will be compleating a small animation scene for the submission and also trying out a number of different lighting scenarios to give the house a compleat look.   

  Here Is my progress on my project most of my time over the Easter break has been focused on modeling and finishing the house. I have currently modeled the majority of the house and am hoping to finish the last room and populate the rest of the shelves with books and plates to make the house more lived in.  I have done a playblast of one of my finished character textures to show. I am planning on rendering the Turnarounds but currently, I have been using my computer most of the time and do not have time to leave it rendering.  My main plan for the upcoming weeks is to finish the house modeling and Uvs and move on to texturing halfway throughout the week. I am currently working on my last two characters and the texturing and finishing off their hair sculpting. However, I have been mainly focusing on my House modeling as a backup plan for my project. I feel more confident in finishing the house design and presenting it as an environment of peace at the end of my major than...

  Here are the textures I created using substance painter for my child character I used a combination of  Paint layers with a fill effect to add an overall colour to the UV. To achieve the freckles and details on the face I used a black layer mask and painted over it with different texture brushes to reveal the fill layer colour.  I have also added 3 different skin layers stacked on top to achieve a textured feel on the skin.   

  Last night and today I created the controls and final blend shapes for my facial movements here are a combination of all of them in an angry smile face. I also used a Moom control rig for the mouth movements in the face using set-driven keys. I also added up and down controls for both the happy and sade pace plus the open tall and wide blend shape. on each side of the main face shape control. 

Today I finished my final character blink ring, I was hoping to have finished it quicker however I was having trouble with poise space deformers. not working correctly on my eyes. also, the shape of the Eye was a challenging one to skin and get right.

Originally when creating my eye controls I tried following jet pack johns but as I quickly found out because of my lattice differs my eyes would clip through the head mech. However, After remembering that Meg had a similar problem with her models I decided to look at her rig, and after breaking it down and understanding what she had done I used the same process of wrap deformers and locators for my eye controls in order to make them work correctly. under you can see an example of my process of locators and constraints to control my eyes here is an example of my eyes working correctly  Originally I still had a problem with the gap between the edges where the geometry meets however after a while I decided to change my eye locator positions from the eyes display handle to the cornea and this fixed my problem altogether on all three characters.

Yesterday I worked on skinning my three model's here is the process I followed from one of my models. Due to me rigging my Body with Jet pack johns controls I decided to use the same joint hierarchy for my models this also made it easier for me to rig my eye controls as it is a different set up from the year one rig.      

This is the start of the exterior of my house, today I worked out the measurements of the house and added some of the details on the outside. I hope tomorrow I can finish any extra measurements such as the interior rooms and add a  4th window on the upper floor. I will also work on a road and the door for the front of the house.   

Here a fully modeled section of my doll's house that I first showed in my minor submission since then I have set up the UVs of all objects and have also remodeled some of the objects because at the time they were rushed. I am currently working on the living room and the outside of the house and hope to show it soon.