Final

ENJOY!!

Interacting With Han

here is what I was given by Han, we decided the best way to do it was for one person to animate there character completely then give it to the other where they could animate the interaction, I found this fun and especially challenging because suddenly there was a lot more parameters I had to think a lot more about timing especially as my character was now somewhat constrained my Hans

the mid point

the final animation interacting with han

Animating Time

the initial idea and start of the animation process, it was at his time I realised how had it was to animate a quadruped, the main difficulty I had was keeping the feet on the same spot of ground as they landed and the body continued on above them, after watching many a video on digital tutors I decided to jusT key it frame by frame every time the feet were on the ground, it would take A LOT longer but it would give me the desired result

here i came across a bunch more issues getting a quadruped to turn on the spot was very hard the amount of small foot movements all made in a very small amount of time was very difficult and mostly due to my lack of skill and practise just looked like the were gliding around, because of this I rearranged the boxes eliminating the need for the turn

it was also at this time I came across the problem of the front legs being longer than the back, this meant that the gait of each pair of legs was very different so I would have to move the back legs a little faster to keep up with the front, increase the rear hip rotation and try and reduce the front leg gait when ever possible

here I have simplified it even more mainly for time constraints, i managed to make my character sit which i was very happy and surprised my rig let me do, and we can see the beginning of the interaction with the ball

close to my final animation there are still some small things i would like to tweak like the amount of bounce in his step but it is very time dependant unfortunately

Initial Test Animations

now I had a fully functioning rig I was happy with I embarked of creating a few basic animations of a couple of the key movement my character would need to make

above is the first attempt at walking on the spot, it looks a little to floaty.....

above is my first attempt at making my character jump I especially looked at primates and how they leap and land on there hind legs first, keeping the hands quite high throughout the jump off their back legs and land back legs first as well

Rigging

I already had a strong idea of how i wanted my creature to move and interact because of this setting up my rig was rather hassle free i watched this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu6cSCpxJcE
and pretty much just adapted it to fit my model as it was similar to my desired outcome as seen below

 from here i added my IK's  to get the legs to deform the desired way

then I added the controllers where desired and ended up with a rig that i was very happy with the level of control I achieved

(at the end of the animation I wish I had added more controllers for the ankles as the feet kept going through the floor and I think another set of controllers may have helped to combat the issue)

Modelling

an orthographic illustration of the famous LCW chair, the base for my modelling

the modelling process, showing how I modelled half the chair the mirrored and joined the typology

an example of my texture applied over my uv map, keeping the direction of the wood grain going in the direction I want

above is the normal and specular maps that i created and used on the main seat of the chair

the final Lcw chair uv mapped, and with a normal and a specular map trying to increase realism as much as possible.