Rationale

The character I created for this assignment is an old man teapot, that has some issues with his temper. Before I started modelling I outlined a distinct character reference with key physical characteristics as well as personality traits, such as tall, distressed, old, and unforgiving. My research into old man styled clothing helped my reflect these aspects into my model and I am very happy with the result.

Looking back at my modelling process in Maya now, I can see that they way I went about extruding elements was a resulted in some triangle segments in my mesh. This caused a fair bit of issues down the track but I managed to sort most of them out myself.

For the animation side of the project I thought it would be fun to incorporate a little story along with the required sequences just to add that little bit extra to my model’s character. Within my storyboard I made sure to use the character animation principles to aid my narration. One example is where I used suspense in the jump scene by having the teapot preparing to pounce onto the ball so the audience has to wait to see the outcome of the ball.

When it came to animating my old man teapot, I had a clear idea of how I wanted it to move and interact with objects, however, what I saw in my head didn't quite translate onto the computer as well as I hoped. This was especially evident in my walk cycle as I ended up animating three different versions of this.