Ryan Chapman's Work Blog: Po-Koro nearing completion

I've been working pretty hard on Po-Koro and I've just about got everything the scene needs in place. I've been getting lazy on some of the assets and I realize that it actually shows when the smallest thing looks lazily done, so I'm going to spend quite some time on the remaining assets which include: crates, wagons, natural sand piles, sand bags, and some black rocks which are located amongst the red and white ones. Pohatu and Hafu are launched using some black rocks that are on scene and there are a few within the Koro that I might as well add in.

The more I think about it, the more I want to do the entire "Bohrok Invasion" series...but I haven't even started the animating of the characters yet, so I'm unsure if I'll even be able to start any new ones by the end of the summer. If anything, my goal is to 100% finish "Bohrok Invasion" 1 and 2 by the time school starts back. This will, of course, go into my portfolio and ready me for my new classes: Rigging, Level Design, and 3D Animation.

I think I'll save the Tahnok for very last because of several reasons:

1. I already can populate the town with Matoran
2. I have Onewa finished and rigged, I just need to texture him.
3. Pohatu is already done
4. The Tahnok are barely animated and require less of my time than the others like Hewkii and Hafu who have the most animation to be done.

I've already begun devising a plan to sort out the animations of the characters. I think I'll start with the base animations such as walking, running, idle etc. Even though this isn't a video game, the town needs to look busy and panicked and if I have Matoran bounding around, it will work. I wont have to animate each one because they all run off of the same rig! I won't worry about setting up an AnimTree because the characters are going to be animated via Matinee and not through AI or anything.

I will then choose Matoran to animate with specific props. For example, I will animate Hafu using the chisel to knock down the statues and Hewkii with his disk.

The final sequences will be when people are talking with each other or interacting with each other. Since I have never done something like this, I think it will be particularly difficult. I will have to add several skeletons into the scene, animate them individually interacting, then export each one, labeling it as who is doing what. I will obviously divide main characters up into their own animset, but nameless Matoran will have to go into a generic Matoran animset. considering there's going to be at least six nameless Matoran, and I might even add in Ahkmou, it will be somewhat difficult differentiating between the animations. That's when I'll break out the ole' pen and paper. Booyah.

Anyways, my lighting render finished in UDK so I took a few images for you and I'm off to bed (don't mind the purple and white assets, they are placeholders and are untextured).

If you notice anything, let me know!