W6 – Character Study
I am basing my character on a drawing I made in the summer of 2020. It was during the 3rd month our mutual isolation. I starting feeling as if I had no emotional outlet for the loneliness I was experiencing, and the anxiety and the anger that was devouring my insides as I watch number 45 through the screens. So I started to draw out my anger, fear, loniliness and frustrations on paper using only a graphite as my medium and then taking the images into a photo filter for color and texture. I’ve always been fascinating by how abstracted simple shapes and lines can convey certain emotions more clearly than a realistic image.
With the above image as my ispiration for a character study… I started drawing out the storyboard and used Dall-E2 to create initial world for my character.
Initial text description for Dall-E2
“Surrealistic world where water and sand are intertwined like mycelium undulating and swirling the landscape. The sky above is multicolored filled with planets and galaxies shining in the dawn skies. Sand blows gently across the land.”
The eight images below are a Frankenstein of my select images. There were some really amazing other images Dall-E2 created, but the landscapes were either too disturbing or dark, or just an image that did not spark my curiosity.
The character evolves from all emotions. And emotions radiate an aura. The average person has the ability to use mental imagery pulled from their memory (whether real or imaginary), often triggered by visual, auditory, tactile, olifactory, gustatory, or a combination of these signals to summon an emotional state.
I used MakeHuman to make one character and a backup character with Ready Player Me incase I couldn’t get facial expressions going on the MakeHuman character. Their name is AvaTen and we don’t know if this is all a dream or their reality.
I have not started to retarget any MoCap yet because I’m not sure which AvaTen avatar I will use in UE. So far I’ve tried sevral export Skeletal methods (CMU_HM. Default, None, GameEngine, MHX). I’ve imported into Blender, exported out, used Mixamo, etc. So many versions. What’s happened so far is that some of the Mixamo aminations for GE avatar seem off… like ther’s no weight and they slide. I’m sure in class today, I’ll disvocer the problem….