Animated Exeter: CG modelling

At the end of this week it was my aim to get all the CG elements of the Animated Exeter ident built so that next week we could start bringing them all together and experiment with textures and lighting. I was very pleased with the work that all the Maya guys done and luckily we have all the models built. In case the contemporary crafts students cant make the Phoenix in time me and Andy completed building a CG model of the phoenix. Ralph was able to draw up a design for the phoenix but it is very dull so me and Andy added some nuts and bolts to the model in Maya to give it more character and make it appear as though it is made from scrap metal. I took responsibility for building the body while Andy concentrated on building the head. I used a variety of methods creating parts of the model but mostly it is all created using polygon cubes that have been shaped by altering the vertices's. I was glad to be able to refresh myself with building in Maya because recently I have struggled using the programme after forgetting most of the software over the long summer break. This year i intend to be completely competent using the software.
The zoetrope and cogs were built in Maya by Dan, Jacob is building the clock face which is probably the most complicated part of the building structure and Sam was able to build the whole clock tower. Originally the top of the clock tower was going to be built as part of the set for the stop motion guys to work with and the wooden owls were going to be placed on top but we thought that the pan up the clock tower and change form Maya to real life wouldn't look quite right so we decided to build to top of the tower in Maya and Sean offered to build the owls in Maya. The owls were original small wooden 3D puzzles that the consumer builds. We took the stencil of all the pieces for the puzzle and Sean created them Maya he then spent long hours putting these pieces together so it was kind of like doing a puzzle in Maya. To see the owls visit Seans page
I have also been working with Alex and Mike for the Background design thay have been coming up with design ideas that will be completed by next week so that the background and moving elemants of the background are finalised and can be passed on to the special effects team and compositors.