My 3D Animation

This semester for our Advanced 3D Animation class we had to create a 3D animation, of course.
We also had another subject (Graphic Visualisation) which involved creating our own character and making a sculpture/model of it, drawing up a concept design and making an animatic for it. I finished all that last week which felt good to finally present it all.

I ended up using the same character I created for both that Graphic Visualisation and my 3D animation subject, it just worked out that way for me. Some would call it cheap, I'd call it, fleshing out my character more.
The character's name is Slink, a robot with springs for arms and legs (forearms, calves), hence the name Slink. He basically has limited knowledge of the world and learns as he goes, often getting himself into trouble, but due to his nature, is able to get away from any trouble, most of the time. Below is the concept design for the Graphic Visualisation subject, unfortunately my Wacom Bamboo's sensitivity decided to die on me which is apparently a Windows XP problem when I searched it up. So my concept design looks like it was done in paint, but I maintained that I went for a cartoony look.



It's basically Slink in the city, being lost and such. My animatic was taken from my storyboard I did for my 3D animation class, just tightened up and shortened and ended up being 15 seconds long so when I presented it, it flew by fast while everyone else's animatics were up to a minute long, even longer for some.

Below is Slink in 3D! Chucking a pose, from the look of that pose, what sort of character would you say he is?



Finally, my 3D animation, which I spent ages doing, first modelling the character and rigging him, creating his environment and finally animating. When I started animating I realised my rig failed on me, giving me a weird glitch with his leg springs. So I had to limit the amount of walking he does, and the view you have of him walking to keep it looking decent. That also means this is a once of character in terms of large movements unless I fix it, but I think that'll involve re-doing him. I'll leave that for another time.
Animating took probably 3 nights total, with very late nights, sleeping later and later each night to get it completed. But I timed things out well and finished animating on Friday night, leaving Saturday to render everything and find sound effects/music to edit it all together. Come Sunday I put it all together, with sound effects (recorded the walking sound effects myself as I couldn't find what I wanted online) and showed it off to a couple of people, after their comments I decided to add an extra ending, and animated another 7 seconds of animation, which took....around 2 hours to do then edited onto the video and rendered it all out and now, what was to be a 30 second clip originally is now a 1 minute short film. I think it could've been better but I'm happy with what I've done, considering my first attempt was horrible compared to this. And with that I'm done for the semester, I plan to muck around with 3D during the holidays in preparation for next semester's two 3D animation subjects.
And now, for your entertainment, Slink at the Museum...



Uploaded it to youtube for better viewing than on this small video thing.