My Finished Animation

After a lot of hard work, some antibiotics and no sleep I was able to finish off Lola.



I thoroughly enjoyed creating her, despite all the problems I encountered.



My aim was to create a feminine woman, with all the assets to make a women be seen as sexy: Bum, Tum, Lips, High Heels. I wanted to portray Lola as being a character such as Jessica Rabbit and Betty Boop, To do this I had to look into what people associate with sexy. I looked into the way models walked on the catwalk and tried to get Lola to walk like this. I also looked into the act of blowing a kiss, as this is seductive and flirtatious.



Incorporating it with one of the sexiest songs around I thought I did quite well .



Limitations



Unfortunatley due to the fact that 3dMax was not compatible with computers at home I ended up doing my model in 3dMax 10 and 11, as I only had 30 Day trials, you can only install the latest versions, which are not the same as the university versions, and I could not work at university otherwise I would have had to have started my animation from scratch.



I also had sinusitis for a week which put me back a lot as looking at bright lights and computer screens killed my eyes.



I found the newer versions more difficult to use as I was learning as I went. I do not like the black exterior of the packages and found it difficult to get used to.



I spent hours and hours editing the envelopes to the bones, and when it came to animating, I had many issues with a malfunctioning "AutoKey",



Despite these problems, I enjoyed researching into what makes a woman sen as sexy and looking into what I can do to my character Lola to show that she is womanly.



Jessica Rabbit, Betty Boop and Marilyn Monroe, were all inspirations to making this animation, as especially the first two, they are world famous sexy animated characters.



With more time I would have liked to make Lola do more feminine characteristics such as wave, wink and move around more.

Betty Boop

Betty Boop was known for her sexual appeal. She was the first and one of the most famous sexy symbols on the animated screen.

She represented a sexualised woman, as she wore short dresses, high heels and a garter belt. She reveals flesh and cleavage and is known for it.

I like the way the artist uses her eyes to express feelings. She winks a lot , and is very flirty.

She also walks very slow, which draws attention to her feminine shape and long legs.

She has influenced me in creating Lola

Jessica Rabbit Video

I studied this video, as it showed me how someone who was thought by millions of people as a sex symbol, even thought she was just a cartoon! I liked the way her body moved, and the way that she moved slowly , yet seductively. I tried to copy this when making Lola, and make her phsyique similar, just like Jessica's the sex symbol of that era.

Coincidently, Betty Boop is also in this video clip. This shows they are using the two most sexy females around.

Jessica Rabbit however is more advanced than betty, and as voted the most alluring characteron the television screens which has been animated. Betty boop was a close second.

Animating my character

Now that .... is fully boned and skinned, the only thing left to do is animate.

For my first part of the animation I wanted to create a walking sequence. Because I didn't do it the easy way by creating a biped, its not very easy to walk.

The walk

I studied a walking sequence to see how it should be done:

To start the animation I moved .......... into the first position of the above image. I checked the timeline below that it was on 0, and then selected Auto Key(which turned red) . 10 frames later, I chose the second position,making sure that Auto Key was still selected. I had to make sure that for the second position the head of the character goes down otherwise she would stretch. I did the same for all the positions, spaced out by 10 frames, and kept going until I returned to the first position again.

I worked on the arms and legs separately. First of all I did all the positions of the legs, and then secondly I went thorough all the stages for the arms. I did them separately as not to get confused.

Once the first walk cycle is completely done, this can be repeated now for a walk.

Here is my first attempt at the walk cycle. In this my character has not been smoothed, as I found it easier to work with her when she was just her original materials.

This is the first walk so is not perfect whatsoever, It is not very womanly or feminine. To make her more feminine I decided to study Jessica Rabbit.

In the film " who framed roger rabbit" there is a sequence where she walks up and down the stage.

I watched this sequence many times to see how I could make my character walk more like her.

What I did notice was that , She walked with one foot in front of the other. This is also how models walk down the catwalk. I watched videos of models walking down the catwalk to learn how they did it.
This is a very feminine and sexy way to walk. I tried to adapt the animation to this , by just moving the foot in the animated sequence, for one foot to be in front of the other.

In the video of Jessica Rabbit she uses her arms to shape her hips. This is very womanly and feminine.

I put each hand on my characters waist, and kept them there throughout the the walk.
Every 10th frame, as one leg was forward, I made the opposite shoulder poke out, giving the impression of a girly femine walk.















Now that I have the walk completed I am going to do another feminine sexy action. This is to blow a kiss.

I looked at how Jessica rabbit, Betty Boop and Marilyn Monroe, blew kisses, and tried to copy it


Blowing a kiss


Betty Boop is known as the first and one of the most famous sex symbols on the animated screen. This is a very known pose for her, and I would love to create this with my character.





Here is an image the infamous Marilyn Monroe, blowing a Kiss to the camera.

I am going to add this action to my sequence. This will be affecting my characters hand and head and maybe shoulders.

For the lips I took some pictures of a Friend, in the pout position and the normal, as I wanted to see what actually happens to the lips when they are blowing a kiss. I found these photos very useful. (imageS) I viewed them zoomed in, and, when Lola was going to blow a kiss, I set the autokey and changed the Lip to the pout phase. This made it look alot more affective.

To move my shoulders I moved the shoulder bones, which then moved the arm bones.I also ad to move the head slightly otherwise it looked weird.

The hands were a very annoying part of the model as Lola's hand bones, always seemed to twist and turn the way I didn't want them. I spent hours going over bits that I had done. I think it all came down to however the AutoKey. I found sometimes that it didn't work , and as I pressed it, I would carry on and save my work, yet the autosave hadn't registered.

Adding Some Text

I thought I wold add a little bit of Text saying "Lola" just to introduce my character. I did this by using the line tool. I wanted to give the text a bright "girly" affect so I chose the Glow affect.

Firstly In the materials editor, I made my lines thickness 5, as i wanted them to stand out. I then set the properties to fallout. I then selected the colour as I bright Pink/Purple colour.

I increased self ulimination to 100.

In the render setup, I set the custom output to HDTV and changed the width setting below it ,to 720.

To add the affect, I went to rendering, effects and add Lenz affect. I then selected glow from the parameters.

In the options menu below, I decreased the size to 1, and increased the source colour.

Adding Music

The most typical sexy song, that I could think of, which has been in many films was Joe Loss, and his orchestra, "The Stripper". Automatically when this songs comes on, you are given the impression of sex appeal and a woman. I chose this for obvious reasons as I thought it would be a good song to portray famine and flirtatious behaviour.

The song was 3 minutes long. I wanted to shorten it down to the first small part of it. I did this by using Audacity. Audacity enabled me to cut the song,and fade it out so it didnt sound so sharp in the ending.

Now that the song was edited, I saved it and used a software package to convert it into WAV format, as 3DMax will only work with WAVS.

To insert it into my scence, I extended the timeline at the bottom with the Open Mini Curve button to the left of it. In the options down the side I then selected sound, Add sound and inserted my WAV. This automatically inserted into the WaveForm.

Scaling my animation

Now that the music is on the animation, I watched a preview of it. I noticed that Lola was walking very fast for the music, So i wanted to slow it down. In Betty Boop and Jessica Rabbits, she certainly was not in a rush to go anywhere so i decided to slow it down.

To slow my walk down I selected all my leg bones and went into the MiniCurve editor.

I then selected "Keys" at the top and "Scale" and then I dragged the current keys to the right, whilst dragging the keys ,all the frames stretch out . I played around with this setting until I found the right speed for her walk. All the Keys which went past 90 Frames I deleted as I wouldn't be needing them.

Cameras

I wanted my use of cameras to be simple. I wanted show show Lola at different angles, but put more attention on her kiss at the end, and her shape and figure.

Firstly I created the path I wanted the camera to follow, I did this by selecting the Top, and front view ports, I could then see where I wanted the camera to go . I used the Line tool and made a shape, from behind Lola, going around to the side, and ending up at the front of her, zooming into her face.

I chose this path, as it could show, the shape of her bum, hips, the way she walked and then finally her blowing a kiss at the end.

The camera I used was a "free camera". I I positioned my Free Camera on the screen and then assigned a Path Constraint Controller. I did this by selecting the camera, going to the motion panel and selecting assign controller. I then selected "Path Constraint" I then selected my Line, and the camera attached itself to the line.

When I followed the timeline the camera followed along the path, however, it didn't really know where to point. Just like all the other parts of the animation I selected AutoKey at the positions I wanted it to change direction and used the rotate tool to the camera to make it point in the right direction.

Bones and envelopes.

Now that the skin of the body is nearly complete. I need to create the bones, or it to be able to move.The bones were found in the Command Panel, Create Tab, Systems and then Bones.

To create the bones, I made the skin see through by right I can easily see where I want the bones to go.on the body and selecting see through.

Now that the body is see through, I can see where I wanted the bones to be. I stared off with the stomach. I started off with the backbone, and created the spine by just creating a number on bones in a straight line in the middle of the back.


Click and drag for each bone you want to create. This is a fairly simplistic IK chain and will only require four bones, for the hip, knee, ankle, and toes. Right-click to end the chain.

For the spine the bones were dragged down to the bottom in a straight line in the middle of the body. Once at the bottom of the stomoch, a bone like a tailbone was created to have more control over the bum.

To make it easier to see the bones, and to know where they control they can be made bigger by changing the bone parameters.

All of the body parts shoul be boned. according to the muscles of the body, this is so that movement can be made easier.

Envelopes

By selecting multiple body parts and putting a skin to it, it makes there an easyier way to give each bone an area to control.

Now that all the boens have been made, they can be skinned to the limbs. This can be done by selecting the limb, for example starting with the arms, all the arm skin can be selected and go to modify on the command panel.

In the command Panel>Skin

In the parameters roll out then select Add Bone and select all the bones that are in the arms.

* This was quite difficult as I Had't before hand named all of the bones to what they actually are. Once I had realised my mistake I went back and named every bone, like arm1, arm2, arm3, so I knew which part of the body they belonged too.

Now that it is linked to the skin this may not be the end. Even though the limb has been selected that is wanted to move, sometimes part of it may not move, or on the other hand, sometimes some of the vertices's of the object move when they are not wanted. Below is an example of this error.

This is where envelopes come in.

To edit the envelopes, select the limb and go to edit envelopes which is at the top of the roll out, above "Add Bone".

If any of the bones are selected, it provides a highlighted area of the bone, with a red shape around it. This shape controls how much control the bone has over the limb. When the shape is moved this changed the colour of the vertices's or the limb, red means it is controlled completely by the bone, and orange is slightly less, blue is still affected but not as much.

Below is the arm, boned perfectly, showing how fixing the envelopes right makes the movement soft and lifelike.

Multiple objects can be selected and skinned to a bone, for example, I wanted the spine to control, the neck, breasts torso and dress, as they are all in the same area., by selecting all of these and doing the same as before,

*Remember that when first fixing the bones to the limb, the object should be at its most normal, hiding the mesh smooth and other affects. This was realised and much time was spent, when the leg of the character would not bone, this was fixed once no effects were visible.

Once all the body parts have been boned, they were tested to make use that they were all moving the right parts and nothing was being pulled in the wrong direction. They were tested by selecting bones, moving them and looking in all the view ports to make sure they were moving correctly. Undo was then pressed so that the skeleton was then back in its original position.

Problems

I had many problems with the envelopes and I had to re skin lots of the bones, as they easily get attached to many wrong vertices's.

When skinning the feet and legs, this was were the most of the problems I encountered were as all the objects were close together, they seemed to try to attach to either side easily.

To fix this problem I had to exclude vertices's which weren't part of the leg, and dress. I had to keep testing and moving around the ones to make sure that vertices's weren't selected when they shouldn't have been.

As you can see in the image below, there are many verticies, so by leaving some out which are supposed to be affected, not attaching verticies is as much as a problem as attaching too many.

Now all the envelopes have been sorted for now I can move on to animating Lola.

My characters profile

My character is called LoLa

She is late 20's , a Lively, vivacious girl.

Shes very flirty, and known for it.

She is based on the Idea of Jessica Rabbit, being sexy and flirtatious yet unavailable.

Just like Jessica Rabbit, the shape of a women is sexy, My character has big breasts, and a big bum.

The breasts

After doing some research and common knowledge, I found that a feminine physical attribute is cleavage, as large breast size is a trait considered feminine. This can be suggested by visual clues, such as the cleavage between breasts. Many women will emphasize this by wearing things which push them up and together to enhance femininity.Some people regard use of cleavage as a form of feminine flirting or seduction, within the confines of community.

(Salmansohn, Karen 2007) (Desmond Morris)

Dress

Tight dresses, which emphasize all womanly features are used to do exactly that, an example of this mimicked a corset. A corset is a garment worn to mold and shape the torso into a desired shape for aesthetic or medical purposes. In recent years the term corset has also been borrowed by the fashion industry to refer to tops which to varying degrees mimic the look of traditional corsets without actually being one. These have very little affect, if any, on the shape of the wearers body.(Steele, Valerie(2001))

HIgh Heels

High Heeled Footwear is footwear that raises the heel of the wearers foot significantly higher that the toes. They give the aesthetic illusion of longer, more slender and more toned legs. High heels however have been blamed for reducing women into a sex object, however this is argued as they become a part of normal life, and a womanly attribute.

Hips

Females, tend to have large hips this occurs as part of the pubertal process, this affects their walking style, resulting in a hip sway.Females hips are generally wider than female shoulders.

Body Language - Sexy, Flirtatous

I have been looking at body language and how with actions alone, no sound it is easy to tell how someone is feeling.

I found the website eHow, which was fabulous for videos showing body language. All these actions re staged, but give you a broad clear insight into what people do with there body language when they are feeling a certain emotion or even simply just in there every day life.

This is an image of a cartoon Jessica rabbit. It was also made more realistic below, b de-cartoonising it.

My favourite body language was Jessica rabbit however. When i thought of the word.

Jessica is the absurdly sexy wife of hapless hero Roger, and she's a constant temptation to detective Eddie Valiant. With mock innocence and more curves than Daytona, she delivers the immortal line: "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way."

She is seen as being very sexy and flirty, and in a clip of her from the film that i viewed her body language is very powerful, and gives of the sexy flirty vibe, with the use of her shaking her bum, pouting her lips and flirtatious eyes.

When making my own Jessica rabbit i would chose the cartoonised Jessica rabbit, as it gives me more time to concentrate on her facial expressions rather than how realistic she looked.

These are certainly true for Jessica Rabbit, that's why i think she is a perfect character to study.

Another person who portrays similar behaviour is Marilyn Munroe.

Marilyn Monroe personified Hollywood glamour with an unparalleled glow and energy that enamored the world. Although she was an alluring beauty with voluptuous curves and a generous pout, Marilyn was more than a '50s sex goddess. Her apparent vulnerability and innocence, in combination with an innate sensuality, has endeared her to the global consciousness.

By looking at these pictures, and Reading about how both of these characters portrayed sexy, flirtatious behaviour I can create my own model and to be just like them.

I want to create a character who s sexy and feminine. I am going to focus on what makes a woman sexy and feminine.