Introducing Olof!

MEET OLOF!

Since Disney's Frozen became a trend, I was really itching to watch it! 

And when I did, I can't help not admiring the awesomeness of the characters especially Olaf!

Every time I watch a Walt Disney 3D Animated film, I really can't help the urge of wanting to do an animation myself.

It all started with Tangled, but my 3D animation skills are really poor those days so making my own animation was all but a dream.

But during the Frozen days, I already gained enough knowledge and skills to create my own animation and also, I want to do some tests before creating an original animated short, so without hesitation I remodeled Olaf!

Olaf (right), Olof (left) 

I tried so hard to copy Olaf but I failed and ended up creating a new character! I named him Olof! Olaf's older brother.

It was actually going to stay as pictures of Olof posing with Olaf:

or Olof posing with my pal, Doodly, which turned to be his bestfriend:

but the urge of making Olof move just won't stop bugging me so I tried to animate Olof...

BUT!

I modeled him poorly the first time so I remodeled him to have a more decent topology. :)

This time I made him older looking. And unlike the first model, I rigged this one completely, including the Facial rig.

Oh! If you don't know what rigging is then I'm obliged to tell you:

In 3D animation, characters are modeled (usually) from a cube to a full body model of the character (usually on a T-position like the image below)

In bigger production, the position of the Modeler, Rigger, and Animator are split into different teams. In my case, I have to do everything alone. So after I modeled Olof, I rigged him or put some bones on his boneless body which we, the CG fellows, call "mesh".

Oh! By the way, I used a free and open-source 3D Animation suite called, Blender.

You can download it, if you're interested, by clicking this:  Download Blender for FREE!

BACK TO OLOF TALK!

I rigged Olof, first the basic bone structures (head, neck, upper body, lower body and the limbs) then the facial rig which enables him to smile and then some additional rigs that would enable me to flatten his face and deform it in a cartoonish way.. :)

Basic Rig

Facial rig

Additional rigs

If you're a pro animator and a Blender user already, you might notice that I didn't create custom shapes for the bones. To give you my excuse, I don't really need to customize it since the B-Bone structure is already comfortable for me. :)

SO YEAH!

This is the OLOF model! You can download the .blend file(Blender file) on the link below.

Click here if you want to play with Olof too! :)

ANYWAYS!

Now that I'm finished with the Modeling and Rigging, I HAVE TO ANIMATE HIM!

So I started planning....

My mind settles quickly to the idea of making Olof move with Olaf because of this video:

It's one of Disney's preliminary tests on making the characters move. You can watch more on their YouTube channel here: Walt Disney Animation Studios' YouTube channel

So seeing the video I immediately imagined how I'm going to put him there.

And after 1 week of animation, I made this:

Just click the annotation on the end of the video to see more awesomeness!

AND THAT'S IT!

That's all there is to know about Olof!

Don't hesitate to Subscribe to my YouTube channel to see more awesomeness!

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So YEAH!

This is MJ Vilches of Doodle Notes.

"BRINGING FORTH AWESOMENESS TO GLORIFY THE AWESOME!"

Over and Out.

The Battle Concept Arts 2

Concept Art Update!

My plans for The Battle are still rotating between doing it in FULL 3D, which means to model everything from characters to environment into full 3-Dimensional CG elements, or 2D, which means I model them in simple 2D elements in Blender. The latter may be the one I'm going to consider the most, since it's simple and my laptop can handle it without crashing. But the other option may give me more freedom but will surely consume time. I might have a final decision by the end of the day.

This is the Stage Plan for The Battle. I like to put Background Elements and Foreground Elements because it adds Depth especially when the camera is moving around. I actually based the concept out of one of the games I played called, Limbo. The stage may vary depending on what style I'll solidly follow when I've decided today about the two options.

Height Comparison!

This will be the FINAL sizes of the characters that you'll be seeing in the short. Two of the characters will have the majority of appearances.

ANYWAYS!

Watch The Battle here: (will be posted here after upload)

That's it for updates!

February 19, 2014, 10:24 am

While waiting: watch some of Doodle Note's works here: http://www.youtube.com/doodlenotes1234

The Battle Concept Arts

They're not much. But here are some concept arts for Doodle Note's upcoming 3D/2D Animation Short entitled, The Battle.

I don't have a pen tablet to create this guys so it's a challenge to create them and I have to invent some techniques that other "poor(financially)" artists would've done too. But...

ANYWAYS!

THE BATTLE CONCEPT ARTS

The Protagonist

The Antagonist

more monsters...

You might notice that I based the other monsters on the 7 deadly sins. Although it's not exactly biblical, bits and pieces of it are mentioned in the bible. I didn't have concepts for Pride and Envy, because my plans for Envy as a monster is that it's a shapeshifter, which assumes the appearance of the creature its envied with. Pride, on the other hand, is just the same with the look of the "Monster Concept Art" since its got the most leader-like look among the monsters.

I won't really reveal so much because it might be a big spoiler and could ruin the short for you viewers. Hehe.

Link to 3D/2D Animated short will be posted here (     ) once uploaded. Thanks for reading the Blogs! :D