Project 1: The Second Self Evaluation

Research, design and produce a personal identity package

The idea of this part of the project was to create an avatar which represented me. An environment to stage the animation was also required.
To begin this project we began with seminars introducing us to 3ds max, although at the start I found the program very complicated and confusing I found that the more that I played around the better and more confident I became. I did however miss a couple of the seminars, although I was able to catch up by communication with friends and also the worksheets on the vlp. I feel I managed to keep up with the progress of the teaching however contact with a tutor while I was learning would have helped greatly and possibly made making my avatar a lot quicker.

To start this project I began to research what identity was, what it meant to people and how it was perceived by different people. I believe that this research helped me start this project with good basic ground knowledge of identity and alter ego’s.
Another helpful bit of research was the worksheets on character design on the vlp. Reading these helped when I began to sketch out character ideas.

When drawing I tried to vary my characters as much as possible to give me a wider spectrum to choose from when generating my final character. I am happy with my sketches as I feel they gave me a good starting base, however more sketches could have made designing the character even better. This however would have taken more time and left me with less for the actual animation.

I chose the robot, purely because I like mechanics and sci-fi type character design. To link it to me, its personality would be similar to mine, such as its fears, reactions etc…
Overall I am very happy with how my avatar looks, I added the chrome material and other reflective metal look to add reflectiveness to the character. I am especially pleased with the wheel of my character. This was meant to look like a motorbike wheel, a passion of mine, I believe I was able to create the look that I wanted to achieve.
I feel though that with a little more time I could have made more features on my robot (mobot – motorbikerobot). This however would have increased rendering time further, and 10 minuets per frame is a little to much!

The environment was created to be similar looking to that of a game, such as CO4, GTA etc… The background relates to me due to the fact it is a city, like where I am from (london). Also in the map there is a dark room, in which hides on of my fears – spiders – although not always scared of them, while at uni I have woken up on countless times to find one walking on my face or pillow – very disturbing at 4 in the morning!
I feel that with the lighting in place I was able to create the right atmospheric mood I wanted.

All in all I am very happy with how my avatar turned out, although I spend a near 15 hours building the character alone, I feel that it was worth it in the end. This also applies to the ridiculous rendering time. In future I would like to plan my time out better, and perhaps use more than one computer when rendering.
I feel that my character represents me, although not in a immediately obvious way, I think that I would have to expand and add things to my avatar / environment so as it reflects more of me.
I am very pleased with how I feel when working in Autodesk 3ds max, and also the results it is possible to achieve. Can’t wait till I can get back on it again!