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Sunday 24 November 2013

Pre-Production: Barnabas Form Anatomy

Hello Everyone,

We are back and it pleases me that I am the second post since this weeks Dissertation fiasco. We basically had to get our drafts ready for a Friday hand in so we were wrapping all of that up... That more or less excuses our absence but now we are full throttle again. I have to say I thought doing these anatomy tests would be a quicker exercise but there was a lot of face book debating over the forms so I had quite a bit of correcting to make Sammy and Chrissie happy. It's cool though I mean I'm not doing my job if we don't all agree with something...

Anyway this post is the Barnabas rendition of anatomical skeleton tests. Prior to adding detail and establishing a side profile I thought it best to get opinion on the number of heads into Barnabas's body. We had a system in place which we thought would work. We actually found that in the end it didn't which required me to go back and adjust Benjamin's profile slightly. Of course then we had an issue with Benjamin's head being bigger then Barnabas's head which we looked odd when we compared to two together... Benjamin was clear as day and Barnabas wasn't...

Anyway I have included everything in this post so you will see the journey...

The images above show a couple of the animated skeleton tests I conducted... This time I just had fun with the form which I ended up creating. There was such a huge amount of adjustment that I figured I'd just show the girls how this form looks when moving in various ways. The arms are a little longer now just to bring it closer to the reference but fundamentally that's the form I ended up relying on. I could not resist adding the hat here, it was essential to figuring out Barnabas to Benjamin's head space. You may have to click the images to see it in its glory, Barnabas is significantly taller then Benjamin.
Anyway I started off by working from Sammy's rendition of Barnabas which she drew from Chrissie's Barnabas (see the post here). First I made it symmetrical as it makes it easier to plot the skeleton. I keep the faces Asymmetrical in this case as they just look wrong if there not. I then plotted an ideal 8 headed rule onto Barnabas (which at the time fit exactly into Benjamin's head). I found this hid a lot of Barnabas's facial details making his had quite small to a large Benjamin's. This is when I went onto facebook at reported the problem to my creative partners...
The images above are individual images which I submitted to facebook for direct confirmation from Sammy and Chrissie. We knew Barnabas's head had to be bigger but doing so would require us making him even taller. I started with a 5 head rule which quickly moved into 6 heads when Sammy thought his head was too big. I then made him 6.5 Barnabas heads tall (which was 10 world Benjamin heads). Then Sammy thought Benjamin looked too small so I corrected his size from 4 Benjamin heads to 4.5 adding the extra .5 to his leg height. Then I shrank Barnabas's head slightly and all the Barnabas scale to get a final 7 head rule which I thought worked quite well...
I then found when scaling Barnabas that the final 10 head Benjamin rule and a 7 head Barnabas rule had made it legible for the male anatomy - 7.5 head rule. It lines up almost perfectly which I was kind of chuffed with. This was where I realised the arms were probably a little short so I lengthened those in the later image. This method implies a 3.5 head ruling for the upper body with a 4 head ruling for the lower body. As the realistic adult male anatomy is based on a smaller head to Barnabas's you gain the extra 1/2 a head... This is why Barnabas ends up being 7 heads..
Next shows my final workings out with both Benjamin and Barnabas in the scene together. The final head ruling works Benjamin height to be exactly 3 Barnabas heads (the equivalent of 4.5 - Benjamin heads). Barnabas's total size is 10.5 Benjamin heads and 7 Barnabas heads. The concern which started this was the hat fitting one and not the other which this now shows is no longer a problem. The key between Barnabas and Benjamin is 2 Barnabas heads make 3 Benjamin... This keeps Barnabas's head bigger then his sons... which adults heads usually are... Kids heads just look bigger compared to their body size.
Last but not least I decided to conduct my own tests from the original silhouette and compare Sammy's animatic rendition of Barnabas. I also added my crude skin version, you will have to look closer to see it properly... In this the arms are also not fully corrected but this was just to see Barnabas in comparison to our earlier understanding of his form. It's quite refreshing to see this form still circulating around the ideas we have discussed in previous weeks. Its also nice to see the Dummy form 19 still looks situated in that form... Sammy's sketch is also a nice indication that we are on the right tracks...

From these two forms I now have to create the slightly shorter renditions for Bernard and Young Barnabas which will be another post hopefully later today... Doing these skeleton tests can be a bit testing but I suppose everything has to be right for when I commit to the turnaround process. Hopefully by next week I have a lot more nailed down. To me these two forms work and they are not a far cry from the proportions of the other character... It is easy to drape skin and clothes over the top for the final turnarounds, I'm actually looking forward to getting this done...

Anyway ill catch you later!
xXStItChXx

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