Amanda Rabade

Last Thursday I was able to speak with both Adam Burr and Ignacio Barrios, he was a character rigger for The Peanuts Movie. After catching up Ignacio on my thesis and other details Adam was already aware of, I was able to show both of them the progress I had made since my initial meeting with Adam. I started a new Maya scene with a much simpler model and began building a surface based facial setup up, following along with Jonah’s blog.

This is a video I had recorded for Jonah with some questions I had as I was working on this setup. This is essentially what I had showed Adam and Ignacio regarding the progress I had made.

Ignacio was also able to give me some really good feedback on the Billy model. He thought it would make things a lot easier if the resolution of the model was lowered. This weekend I attempted to get it down, but I am also speaking with my modeler Kate so she can get it cleaner for me.

Both Ignacio and Adam agreed that due to the nature of Billy’s extreme poses for his mouth, I create a rig that can “switch” heads. Ignacio recommended I take a look at the original dialogue I had chosen and analyze it, then identify the 3 or 4 extreme poses. Those are the poses that will need extra heads sculpted and blendshaped together. This will allow the animator to “switch” heads and get a wider range of expressions. If I were to keep the rig exclusively joint based, there would be so much stretching and compressing of the geometry that it wouldn’t look good. Both of them were emphasizing the importance of a low resolution model. This means there is a lesser chance for the model to have unwanted wrinkles and creases, which normally would be fine for a more realistic and anatomically correct model, but not ideal for simpler, stylized characters.

Hopefully these meetings can become weekly, this way I can get as much input on my project as possible.