Minor • End of Week 5 Progress • Week 6 Plan

Due to electric problems this post is a little late, this should be resolved enough to continue working unaffected.

Well, week 5 went by in a flash, the main problem I had was with the squids rigging.
I knew it was going to be difficult, but it was much more than planned that it required another week to figure it out.

Every bone in the Tentacles needed squash and stretch, leading to an awful looking node editor, but it was working.

When I reached the 'hands' I realised they needed the same thing.

but the one thing that seemed missing was twisting of the tentacle, I can't get a proper twist like I want but the IK handles twist does a suitable job. I can only twist in one direction, not half one way and half another.

I may have made his rig more complex than needed as I added driver bones connected to a control, I might have been able to skip the driver bones, but I felt these were needed in case the controls broke on me whilst sorting out the rig.

The rig was remade a couple times whilst working to make it work, the hand control in the image was removed for something that works nicer.

The main problem I have now is I lost about a week to rigging, pushing my work back a week, meaning my little schedule needed adjusting a little.

I am also aware there is holiday time in this time frame that is not acknowledged in my schedule, I purposefully left it out of planning in case this happened, meaning I may have more time than I think I do, as I usually work through holidays anyway.

Due to the complexity of the squid, I think it might be best to work on the second hardest character,
which I believe to be the 'Froth' mainly due to his hair simulation research.
The rest of the week will be resketching the design a few times with less detail, meaning removing the hair for now, but it may be an idea to focus on hair tests on a ball before starting the design, as it may be a solution to make sculpted stylised fur instead of simulated fur

Week 1 - Wrapping up the Premise work and starting redesigns
Week 2 - Starting to finalise the redesigns
Week 3 - Start modelling the Chubby squid
Week 4 - Modelling, texturing, rigging and experiments for this design
Week 5 - Chubby Squid Rigging & Problem solving
>Week 6 - Start modelling the 2nd character
Week 7 - Modelling, texturing, rigging and experiments for this design
Week 8 - Start modelling the 3rd character
Week 9 - Modelling, texturing, rigging and experiments for this design
Week 10 - Start modelling the 4th character
Week 11 - Modelling, texturing, rigging and experiments for this design
Week 12 - Focus on animation and rendering
Any Extra Time - Finish up and polish