What more can I say? Comments are on the Blip TV file. Click it!

Okay I have a few comments after all: I couldn’t get the ear control object to work. It only worked in the Z rotation. That was ok, though, because it conveyed enough emotion. I also wish I could have made the tail twist in different ways than it does, such as a back twist at the end and a forward twist at the base, but I just have a z and y rotate, which gives it a pretty good range of motion anyway. I would have refined it if it was for a longer project, but for our scope here, it was good enough.

This is part of the final project with Igor.

Done with simply parenting and not bones… it’s a static model anyway, and I didn’t apply IK… for the final I will of course be using some sort of skeleton and rigging. I went the easy route after trying for a couple of hours to use a skeleton and for some reason the bone parenting system didn’t work that well. Maybe I just didn’t parent the right things.

No shading. No lighting. No background. This is the model. It is low poly. It is going to have a glowing tail and eyes, with mostly white and grey plastic and metallic components. Comments?

These are the two most important references from the previous post.

Haven’t decided yet whether I want him to be pouncing up or down. Up is probably easier.

Here, have some reference!:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXwcd1Wk8T8&NR=1 — the best one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ol3XSvoIxg&NR=1 — the second-best, since the jump goes off the screen. From the opposite direction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpaU_xvQmPk&NR=1 — this one’s a ‘fraidy cat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-SMbblxhpM — not so great quality but an amazing jump!

http://www.become.com/pocketchange/kitten_chair_pounce.jpg — single frame… kitten pouncing!

http://www.fotosearch.com/comp/pds/pds122/kitten-about-to-pounce-side-view-~-200221799-001.jpg — and the previous frame… these are the ones I will use for the reference!

Here we have the animatic for my final project with Igor. The background will be simple grey, maybe looking like a computer. I will be modelling the cat robot and Igor will be modelling the laser mouse.

This is the real deal. Finally I put some lighting in there and even a bathtub to set the scene. And got a good camera angle on it. I started using the actual squash deformer, here I’m using two deformers, one for the stretch, which I am rotating along with the angle of the bounce, and a squash which only happens on the ground, in a single direction. There are a couple of places where I’d like to clean it up (on the 2nd bounce it’s a bit sharp) but the deformers aren’t quite cooperating and I’m sure it’d take another couple of hours so I’m leaving it as-is for tonight.

Here’s my first sketch! Haven’t done any orthos yet. Might go straight to the model, though, since it’s pretty simple and I can figure out the geometry better in 3D sometimes anyway.

I zoomed in and edited the squashing and stretching amount a bit. Does it look better?