Week #3: Avatars & Animations
The narrative my group came up with was a love triangle between an animal, bread, and a mushroom at a beach party in Minecraft. For this week's assignment I created avatars with Ready Player Me and used blender to customize the avatars to fit the narrative of the story a little more. I initially started with MakeHuman, but didn't like how "realistic" it looked. I wanted the characters to look more stylized to show that it is their Minecraft avatars.
Initial Sketches for the Characters
Ready Player Me avatar for Animal
The first character I made in Ready Player Me was the animal. It was great that there was a Bear mask on Ready Player Me.
Ready Player Me avatar for Mushroom
Ready Player Me avatar for Bread
There weren't any mushroom or bread masks in Ready Player Me, so my idea was to create a mushroom and see if I could replace it with Ready Player Me's avatar head. I couldn't find a way to replace it, but I found a way to cover the head and connect the meshes. I 3D modelled a mushroom and bread, then I created an avatar without any hair, hat or glasses. In blender I selected the mushroom, then the armature, and in Pose Mode selected the "Head" bone. I parented the mushroom to this bone and it moved with the head.
The slice of bread was too thin when I placed it on the avatar model, so I made it a loaf of bread instead.
Ready Player Me avatars for other party goers
Since the story takes place at a beach party, I picked dancing animations for the other characters. For the three main characters, I wanted them to stand out, so while the other characters are dancing, the three mains will be idle.
Screenshots
