New Year's Revolution!

Tis the new year and a time to get things done. I have some old Maya files of the Alien and the Farmer character as well as the beginning designs of props and locations which everyone can use to rebuild.

Neil Bonsteel has been working on rigging the Alien character and figuring out how to make the tenticle arms and legs move. He also is designing a rig which everyone can use for the project. Once he has tested and retested the Alien, I will let the animators take the Alien and get use to the rig before scenes are assigned.

I am considering a solution to finding a modeler/rigger for the Farmer and Pig characters. From the beginning of this project, I was animating this in 2D and thought it might be interesting to combine 2D with the 3D, CG world. The farmer and the pig characters would be composited together in a CG world where all the models, props, background elements, Aliens, the ship, tractor,etc.I will compiled a complete list of what needs to be build and or rigged. I would like to do a few test scenes with the Aliens to see what kind of look we can get using this process. I want to avoid a flat 2D cartoon slapped on a 3D render, so any other thoughts would be welcomed.

The Aliens should be able to do a lot of things.I want everyone to have fun with the Aliens, whereas the Farmer and pig will need to be treated more real in their motion. Being Aliens, they can squash,stretch and be more cartoony in general. They're bodies float above a scramble of tenticle legs that chase after the floaty upper half of the body. Here's a short test of what I'm talking about.