Bloke In the Toilet – Early Concepts and Development
These images come from early on in the developmental process between myself and Steven regarding the form of the character.
The Start of the Project
I was approached by Steven after he saw my Mouth Piece work. He needed a sleazy character for a music video about indecent behavior. The idea was to have some kind of animated 3d bug/insect singing a song in a public toilet. The song itself is about having sex in a public toilet. Initially, a maggot like creature such as that of the Mouth Piece project. However, there were technical issues which had us look in other directions. Mainly, the creature had to peek through a glory hole. This would not be possible with a maggot, as not only would it have limited movement, but any stretching would look completely unnatural. Considering the options, we ended with two options: snails, or slugs. Through research, and through aesthetic decision making (snails are commonly regarded as a “cute” insect, whereas slugs are generally reviled), it was decided that a slug was the way to go.
Human features were tested and eliminated. Also, one original intention which was dropped was that the mouth was to be a replica of that of the lead singer. This was dropped for three reasons:
- The reference images were not supplied in time, though this is the lesser of the two reasons. There simply would not have been time to produce in time.
- Having a feature which was too similar to the facial anatomy of the lead singer, for example, the lips and inner mouth, would look odd without certain other facial landmarks along with it (the dip under the nose for example).
- Render times, more realism – more geometry + heavier textures + shaders = long render times per frame = not possible in time limit.
After this early work was done, a fully finished model was made, with only the retopology and UV stages to go before being able to be set up for production. This was lost due to a corruption of windows on my laptop (see the Semester Two Reflective Journal).
Steven’s Project
Stevens goal is to create music videos based around a structure wherein he has two words given to him at random by another person, which he then uses as a starting point for his development of a narrative expression of a specific song. The words he received for this particular piece were: Jobbie & Street. It seems to fit rather well, as the song which these words were given for is Bloke in the Toilet, which is about illicit sex in a public space.
[...] (a friend from outside of DoJ) on a project that will last through to the end of Semester Three. This project was instigated by Steven having seen my Mouth Piece project. The idea was to create a music video for the song “Bloke in the Toilet” by Dogs Die [...]