Animating the Calarts 2008 Open Show intro in Blender

We finally started animation but we're learning how to use Blender, not how to animate. It's a funny thing because when you think CG and CG animation, you think of Pixar. But those guys literally have 100s people working on one shot and several thousand controls on each character to make it look as believable as it does.

I've been re-watching all the Pixar films in chronological order as soon as I started this class. As we learned more about the CG world more and more of Toy Story 1 and 2 made sense. I started understanding how they did it. But that's where it stops.

I have no clue how they make Mr Incredible's eyebrows look so good, or how they simulated water in that shot where Reme tumbles down the sewers in Ratatouille. It appears there is tremendous amounts of technological rah rah in CG. It is not a child's play thing.

As far as my learning animation goes, I need to keep it simple just to get my hands dirty. The other day, I found this video for the 2008 Calarts Open Show. I thought stealing his idea would be the perfect assignment to get into animation in Blender without doing real character animation.

Here's my first shot (more like 5th.. let's just say it took me all day to get this far):

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In-class render for midterm exam

We had a practical portion in our 3D Modeling and Animation class. We had to pick from an hourglass, a game controller, a tomato tree, and some others to model without reference. I chose a game controller.

At first I wanted to make a NES style controller but could not remember exactly what it looked like as I started modeling it. So I decided to explore and be creative (in an exam...).

I ended up wasting lots of time rounding the edges on the controler, directional pad and start button and spent no time on the materials or lighting. The professor yelled out 15 minutes and I knew my model sucked.

After I handed it in, I looked up Nintendo controller and found that my model was a mix between an NES and SNES controller. Great...

I fixed it up a little right before this post:

Here's an update:

Realistic Render for class

NOTE: not sure why Google's not linking to larger versions of my last few images...

The first half of the semester in 3D Modeling and Animation was spent learning the software to capture real life just like the first step in a traditional drawing class would be to draw through observation. We were instructed to find a still life and model it proportionately.

For our midterm project we had to choose a scene like a kitchen or a room and model it as realistically as possible. The assignment was to make the render as true to the reference image as possible. The test would be to compare the two images and point out the differences.

Here is my reference image:

And here are my renders building up to that reference image:

Final Render:

Comparison:

Made some adjustments after handing it in:

Another comparison: