The Slug – Overall Progress in Semester Two
Here are the current progress shots of the Slug for the music video. At present the eyeballs are a proxy stand in, and will be replaced with more human like eyeballs in the early stages of Semester Three. This is due to a lack of time this Semester through illness. In total, new eyes will take about a day to complete. Also, I will need to tweak the material settings once we have the lighting and environment set up. This is because the settings used for these renders are based around this lighting condition. My aim is to spend two days maximum in Semester Three working on the shader settings and final tweaks on my part.
There will be other aspects involved, dealt with by my colleagues. Hopefully, I will have time to help out where necessary, though my time will be limited due to my own main project. The collaboration between the three of us will move into a second project, which is related to this one, and is detailed here.
In creating this character I took certain liberties with reality, for a number of reasons. In order for it to communicate effectively with the viewer that it is singing, a more human like mouth was required. The forms of the slug overall were made more cartoon like than hyperreal in order to create a more engaging character than would have otherwise been the case. I did not want the Uncanny Valley effect to make the piece repulsive for the wrong reasons. Also, I made the whole head have the leopard print appearance, even though most leopard slugs do not have a spotty head. My reason for this was simply that the desaturated grey/brown of a leopard slug head was a bit dull.
Collaborators
On this project, I am collaborating with my friends Steven Crichton and David Blake. The roles we are playing in this project are as follows:
Chris Lawton – Modelling / Texturing / Shading
Steven Crichton – Direction / Location Shooting / Mocap Data / Matchmoving
David Blake – Rigging / Animation
[...] The project went through many iterations, and it became apparent that it was bizarrely tied to my own artistic focus. Finally, it was settled on the character being a slug, due to its appearance, and general connotations. The collaboration has expanded above and beyond the original intent, as it has led to the inspiration for a piece of projection work, which will be a further collaboration between the three of us. Further illness (see below) slowed my work on this project slightly, and as such I must complete some final work on it in Semester Three. [...]