3D Printed Model

My 3D printed model! One of her hands fell off but it's still pretty cool.

Modelling in Maya

Being very new to modelling and even Maya, I had to do a lot of research before getting started. So I rented a couple of Maya books from the library and mainly Googled or YouTubed some more tutorials.

One of the most difficult part of modelling my character was the hair and face, as the hair wasn't symmetrical so I had to model it as a whole. And I had trouble with the random spikes in her hair, as I didn't want to model every individual piece of hair on her head, but rather have her hair as one mesh as this would resemble clay more.

And because she has such large eyes which are wide apart it was quite difficult to try and model a smooth face with good edge loops.

In my original design my character had a large zip at the back of her suit, however I decided to not include this as I'm now trying to model a claymation style character and the zip has far to much detail and might not look right. 

And here are the renders of my completed model. I tried keeping as much of the model as smooth as possible to stick with the claymation style.

Building Designs

Here are sketches of buildings we could use in the city. I kept them very simple so they'll look more like they're made out of paper. Again I stuck with the idea from the movie Science of Sleep of using the cylindrical shapes of toilet rolls. And I sketched up some skyscraper style buildings as they tend to use basic shapes and are common in crowded cities. They'll also give the city more depth.

Tighe, Los Angeles 

I found these contemporary buildings and liked the way they're made up of cubes meshed together. To me, they look like abstract cardboard boxes similar to the style we're looking for.

And below, I've started modelling. They're quite boring and dull without any textures but I was focusing on simple but abstract buildings. They might not be used in the main shots but they will definitely prove useful in the wider shots of the city, as buildings in the background.

Paper Bus

Here I found front and side references of a typical London bus to start modelling.

And here is my final out of the bus. Again, I kept it similar to the paper car in using flat planes with no extra details and curves. The texturing was done in the same style as the paper car but with red paper instead. The bus was much harder to texture unlike the car, as it has cut-out windows revealing the interior and because the bus is modelled from flat planes the textures would appear on both sides. So after a little research online I found a handy way using shaders, to texture both sides of the same plane with different images.

Here's a quick animation test. By using expressions, I was able to animate the wheels so when the bus moves the wheels rotate. I gave the wheels that texture so the rotation of the wheels could be seen more clearly as I noticed that before, with just a plain texture I couldn't tell. The animation is a little slow but I like the effect of the textured wheels. 

Paper Car

Some sketches of paper cars. I wanted them to look very simple and basic to resemble a toy car rather than a real one.

Here I modelled the paper car. It was quite simple to model as I've used flat planes with no detail to represent just the basic shape of a car.

I textured my car with one of my cardboard textures, then putting it in Photoshop to add a little aspects such as the windows and wheels. I kept the details sketchy and messy to add to that paper feel. I originally used a paper texture but I changed it to cardboard as it gives the impression of a solid box where as paper is quite flimsy. 

Concept Art

An ideas of what the paper city might look like. We want to for a more abstract look, with odd shaped buildings at different angles similar to the Science of Sleep toilet roll city Amelie discovered. 

Paper Airplane

Above are examples of the style I'm going for of a standard and basic airplane. 

After folding several airplanes I began mapping out the process to give me an idea on how to model it.

Modelling

And here's my airplane model I made, with the help of this tutorial. I simply started out with a flat polygon plane, then added several edges for the folded creases and began moving the vertices to fold the airplane into place.

Texturing

I finished with texturing the model with a white crumpled paper texture. I quite like the end result, however I've noticed that it can be quite difficult to see the folded areas of the airplane unless there is a definite contrast between the light and shadow.

Animation Tests

In my first test I focused on the speed and acceleration. I thought the plane should increase it's speed as it's swooping down but then slow down slightly as it dips back up a little. I was testing for a more natural look with the plane flying down in a simple direction.

Where as in this test, I started playing around with the movement of the plane. It flies in an unrealistic way as if it's got a mind of it's own. I also tried rotating the plane's body according to it's movements, which I think works well giving it a more organic feel, rather than just staying still and folloing the motion path.

Paper Tree

An idea for the design of the trees is to have 2 or more 2D cut outs of the tree's shape, and then slotting them together to create one 3D tree, like the above models. This simple style goes well with our group environment of a paper city.

Here I've started to sketch out ideas of what the trees might look like, again keeping with a simple design.

Storyboards

Whilst finalising the story board we thought our environment could be narrated by a paper plane flying through the city. It'll fly unnaturally for the whole 90 second period, and showing different parts of the city on it's journey. Then it'll fly away from the city and pass the camera, zooming out revealing the city as a small maquette on a table in a museum. The idea is to trick the viewer into thinking the city is larger than it really is.