The Knight Spider (1/3)

 Well, it's been a while since I've posted. That's mostly because I've been a bit tired, but also because I've been struggling to get motivated to work...

Well, I can share what I've got so far!

So, as part of our grade for our Character Acting module, we need to submit a piece to competition. Usually, this would be The 11 Second Club, but because we've started this module later than usual, we get to choose between that and any other competition we want - one of the suggested being The Knight Spider competition run by The Rookies.

As you can tell, I chose to work with the Knight Spider: the competition's timeline works really well with the length of our module and provides us with a professionally made rig and model to use. Despite the higher number of constraints for this one, I think I had an easier time coming up with ideas for this character. Well... kinda?

First of all, I decided to sketch the character in different poses to get a better idea of the Knight's personality:

Sketches of the Knight Spider

Through these sketches, I was able to figure out what I wanted to animate: an actor auditioning for the role of the main hero, where the prompt is fighting and defeating a foe.

I got the vibe that the Knight was a bit full of himself, but also good at his job - that being a soldier - so I knew I wanted to make use of his role in my entry's concept. This meant that I also needed to make props for him (mostly because I didn't wanna rely on other people's work or pay money for props I need, which was an issue from last project), but this wasn't much of an issue as the competition required all props to use the default Lambert 1 material that Maya loads in each new scene.

So, I pulled together a storyboard and some live action reference footage (I guess this is kind of a full body reveal):

Sorry about the shoddy camera work, but this is the storyboard.
Here's the reference footage stitched together.

So, with these pre-production items completed, I began quickly modelling the props for the scene. I knew I needed a blade and a target (in this case, I chose to use a tailor's mannequin), but I also decided that adding a little hat to the Knight would add character to him - choosing a horned 'viking' helmet as reference for the modelling.


This is all three of them in the scene together! I used a wooden sword as reference for the Knight's sword, an actual horned 'viking' hat for, well, the hat, and had to use two images to make the tailor's mannequin: a front-on image of the mannequin itself, and a side profile reference of a female body (because the front reference was also a feminine shape).

With these things now ready to go (and my reference footage imported into my scene), I am ready to start blocking out my acting! I'm looking forward to this, but I know its gonna be a little while before I'm happy with my project...

I'll make sure to update this blog more often! I've still forgotten to share my Pantomime exercise from class, maybe after I've polished it a bit more I'll share it here.

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