Birds and other Sketches

In a previous post, I mentioned how I was modeling a bird in maya, well here are some of the sketches that led to that...

This was my first sketch for the bird. I've been looking a lot at Brittney Lee's artwork and decided to try and make a bird in her style. Later on, I decided to take my water brush pens for a spin and I painted him with a little watercolor palette I had laying around.

I then figured that first one, although he is cute, is way too planar and flat to try and model in maya. So I looked up some photos of some lovebirds and based this guy off of them. I watercolored this during church, and I accidentally squeezed out way too much water from my water brush pen, and the red smeared everywhere, and, since I was at church the most absorbent thing I had was a program, and those aren't super absorbent, so I rubbed it into the page outside the lines. Oops. I could clean it up in photoshop but I don't feel like it right now... Moral of the Story: Don't watercolor in church when you should be listening to the testimonies.

And this is me just trying to figure out what birds look like from the front. I was really inspired by the upcoming movie Rio for all this.

And here are some other sketches for good measure

And here's a pine tree I drew and liked

And here is a girl with a sweet fro that I drew after I drew the headband girl which is why she's floating there.

Updated Hair

ok so remember a little while ago when I posted my "I'd like to kiss ya..." lady? Well here she is with textures, and lights, attached. There's something I don't really like about the ends of the hair but its hard for me to fix at this point because I drew it on with curves, and for some reason, at this point the hairs on the flip aren't getting manipulated when I change the curve. Frustrating. Either way, I am reasonably satisfied with this I still have a ton to learn though.

Also I should probably give her eyelashes at some point, I'm just not too sure how to go about doing that.

And Just for kicks, here she is without fancy added in lights.
Her face gets really dull, but the ends look less weird.

Modeling a Bird

I am modeling this bird right now. I plan on giving him feathers and I am going to rig and animate him. (He is in smooth proxy mode right now, which means half of him is still unsmoothed, and the proxy side will show what he will look like smoothed when you tweak stuff around.

Let me know if you think I should make any major changes, because I think I'm almost done with the modeling stages

Update: Here is the finished Model

I'd like to kiss ya

Rats. It cuts off the last R sound. Oh well.
Blendshapes assignment. I want to add a texture to her SO BADLY but I don't really have the time at the moment to do so. I'll probably go back and add some later, and when I do you all will be the first to see it. Plus I'll add dynamics to her hair so it isn't so stiff, but for now a lip sync is all you get.

sound clip is from a Bette Davis movie called Cabin in the Cotton

Still:

Demo Reel

Demo Reel from Meredith Moulton on Vimeo.

Teapot

This is my little teapot.

Going to the Mailbox

Walking to the Mailbox from Meredith Moulton on Vimeo.

The assignment was to animate someone going to the mailbox, then their letter was supposed to change their emotion, and I came up with this.

Ok, so I've been in a history of animation class. We just finished learning about WWII cartoons. Also in middle school I was OBSESSED with World War II spies, and then they opened the International Spy Museum so long story short, WWII interests me. Hence this cartoon.