Preparation and Initial Thought Process

To start with I decided not to use my own model as the hands weren’t formed properly and it resisted every attempt to lower the poly count. In the end I decided to use the waitress model due to time, and fix my own model as a project over summer as I did quite like him.

I created some storyboards to plan out my animations, the first one is some emotes, waving, jumping, sitting and eating. The second is a walk cycle, which I planned the legs out on paper very simply intending to use it as reference. I tried to imagine the alien model as a little creepy guy that just happened to be sharing the same environment as my original character. I really loved my own character and I wish I could have used him. But I learned a lot about how to form a model ready to be rigged and used for animation now, and that my pc needs to be a lot more powerful to work with such a detailed model!
The final one will be idle animations, which seem simple but bring a lot of life to the character, and catching and throwing a ball as I really wanted to try it. I made the storyboards on paper because it was more convenient and felt more natual than pulling out a tablet and drawing in a program that neatened or smoothed the lines for me. It helped me see where I meant for things to be fluid even though it was just stick men.

The background I made was simple snow with a few sheets of different texture for reflective ice. The trees are also simple, I really like the snow on top though it looks like a cake. I made some smaller and larger trees to try and make it feel more realistic since not all trees are the same size.
For a skybox I literally just made a giant ball and turned it inside out and made it blue. Looks a bit like a snow globe. I didn’t use as much of my scene as I would have liked which is sad as I worked hard to make it feel snowy.

When I was originally rigging my own character I looked up a lot of videos of how deer moved and behaved, due to his hooves, which would have been really interesting to try and animate and I am sad I did not get the opportunity. But I will definitely be working on fixing him up to try that over summer.

I am glad I settled on the weird little green guy though, he was very fun to animate.