Updated concept art

New idea: The figure in the mirror will start out as a brownish gray clay color and gradually change to the color of the real figure.  The change will start at the beginning and it will be complete right before the real figure is revealed.  I like that the real figure is a desaturated, sickly green color.

First Mirror Rig Test

I put the mirrored figure into a t-pose and tried to set up a simple rigging test that mimics one of the actions from the reel.

Below is an animation of the attempt at rigging the part of the reel where the woman turns to see herself in the mirror.  There is a lot of mesh distortion in the character’s chest and hands (although hands not obvious in the clip below).  I think the thumb is going to have to be moved in closer to the other fingers… and I will investigate influencing the chest to make it look less distorted.

I think I accidentally did something to the head when I was playing around. I will fix that.

http://fx.clemson.edu/~ayancey/dpa_860/mirror_rig_test.mov

9/30 reel

Updated reel to include two close-up shots of rigging tests and a combination of the two music passes:

http://www.fx.clemson.edu/~atriple/860/9_30_reel.mov

Right now I’ve found that putting a bend deformer on the pieces works best.  I’m also using cluster deformers to animate the vertices around the pieces that are cut away.  I’ve been looking in to using cloth because it tears very nicely but I still haven’t been able to find a good way to tear away large chunks of cloth.  It always seems to separate into small pieces.

New layout concept art

Here’s an example of the look I’m going for for the film.  I want there to be dust and scratches on the mirror and I used the crack filter in photoshop to hopefully communicate the idea of what the real figure should look like.  This is also the color palette I’d like to use.  Yellow is normally thought to be a cheerful color, but the hue I’m using is desaturated and pale to give the feeling of cowardice and insecurity.  The color yellow historically has been used to signify mourning and the dead.   I’m not completely sold on this color, though, so if anyone has any better suggestions please let me know.

Mirror model 2nd pass

Here’s a second pass at the mirror figure. I’m still struggling with her weight and proportions.

http://www.fx.clemson.edu/~atriple/860/mirror_model.mov

Real Figure Tweaking…

I altered the real figure to make it look less symmetric, somewhat more angular, and more like the Giacometti figures.

9/23 Reel

New reel with another pass at music:

http://www.fx.clemson.edu/~atriple/860/9_23_reel.mov

Playing with Clay!!!

Here are some images taken of our experimental character-designing attempts using clay.

Here is some footage taken of cutting the clay with some sculpting tools.

http://www.fx.clemson.edu/~ayancey/dpa_860/clay.mov

Ideally, we would like for this footage to guide our animations, but it looks like this clay might have been too moist.  The cuttings aren’t as smooth/fluid as we were hoping for.

Concept Art

Here are some drawing of how I would like the mirror figure to look (somewhat overweight but not extreme):

More useful images

I found more images that might help with the concept art for the mirror figure: