[[[ Jelliefishie ]]]

Animation of Jelliefishie

Animation

This image shows the view from camera.

Finally, got all the stuff done on my character and now begin to make the animation of it. The movement of jellifishie is quite simple but flexible. It only cost a few frames to complete its animation. Its movement follows with the direction of water.

Texture

Applying texture to my character. Due to the complex and multi-vertices on my character, finally I just simple cut my jelliefishie into 2 parts and then do the the UV mapping, applied the texture onto it. I found that at this stage what I desired at the first are hardly to come true. For example, transparent skin and constantly changing of its color. Hope I will figure out through the next projects.

Weight painting

After rigging my model, actually not really finish rigging. When I start to weight painting on my character, problems come out! Each vertex I paint on will be extended a lot… The problem is I haven’t named all the bones. They are single and no parent at all!
Return to rigging and IK solve… done!
Then start to weight painting, much better!

Rig the character

Have my model done, and then go through the tutorials for rigging character. Start rigging from the top to each legs of my model, first I tried to fix bone with each segment of my model. In that case, I found that there are over 100 bones in all when I finish rigging. Getting trouble for myself actually… I still can not understand what bones mean to the body, how it effects the movement of the body. Maybe it is due to my character which has no bone at all. However, it still needs “bone” to make it move.

Finally, each legs only has 4 legs at most and it make things easier.

Create 3D model

First entry to Blender which is programmed for create 3D model, everything starts with a cube and then Extrude… At first, I didin't start with a cube and then model comes funny and hard to control by its vertices. Getting struggle to make a hollow cube and jelliefishie’s long legs.

Tutor Kah found my problem and I need to start again. Start with a cube and extrude everything I want from a cube. And then a cube with hollow inside comes out~!
Following with the tutorial both in class and open source online, hollow cube was created by just repeat extruding face of the starting cube.
It is a simple and basic way to create 3D models.Finally, jelliefishie come out.
It has a head with no obvious eyes and 9 legs come from its little body inside its big head.
Looks better...

And some images of my model at point of view:

view from side & bottom of model

view from side & top of model

Sketches

The first two sketches showed above are both based on the research of jellyfish.

Quite like the color and their smooth body, their shape which like a plant.

These two are sketches of cartoon jellyfish. Quite cute actually…

Well, these two are the final design for my character.

It names jelliefishie. Due to it is the same type with jellywish.

They seem like UFO with long and multi-legs...

Hope it go well when I turn the design into Blender.

Description of my character

Base on my research on jellyfish,
finally I decided to create my character as a creature from deep sea.
The feature of my character is its body which is transparent, fluid, smooth and shaped.
It has a soft body as mollusk; also 98% of its body is water content.
It looks like a bell or a mushroom with multi-stemmed.
It grows in the deep sea and always floating in the water;
move away with the direction of the movement of water.
Its appearance of color highlights its body to make itself beautiful.
It appears different color at different time.
It has various colors such as

light blue,

brightness blue,

dark blue,

red,

orange,

yellow,

radish

and

light green.

Research

Some research on Jellyfish


Jellyfish - Curious creatures of the sea
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/jellyfish-curious-creatures-sea.htmlsea.html

Bioluminescent Organisms
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/hughes2001/acct/lzace/

jellyfish.html

Jellyfish pictures!!!
http://www.funny-potato.com/jellyfish.html

Initial concept of my character.

At the beginning of Project 1, I started to design my creature by researching on some kinds of organism I interested in. When I was thinking the place where my creature will come from, the word appears in my mind immediately is the “sea”.

Apart from the land, over 60% of the earth is covered by water. In other words, the sea is a huge place of creating organisms and it also has large even tiny unknown place where some organism live. Then I decided that my creature character will come from the sea and it will survive with water.

By researching on the organisms of the sea, a lot of stuff come out as rich as their habitat. Jellyfish is one of them and it is my interesting organism. I think it is one of the curious creatures of the sea. It looks like a transparent floating mushroom or flower so that it seems like an embellishment of the deep sea.