The Lost Book

Flat pack

Written by Helen Jackson.

Thought this might interest you. You know that we've been economising on our character models - to create a new character we re-use an existing body so that we only need to create a new head (see Demi Remi). You also know that our characters are coloured using "texture maps" - 2D image files that are wrapped around the 3D computer models (see Aileen unwrapped). So, you've probably figured out that we didn't create an entirely new character model when we needed to show Aileen's Mum in episode 6. The two characters have a very strong family resemblance...

...because the computer models are identical. All the differences are in the texture maps:

Aileen's Mum looks very good for her age! We would have given her wrinkles, but she's only seen from behind or with her face in shade so there was no point.

Demi Remi

Written by Adam Brewster.

When we started out on this journey we didn't know if we'd have enough time to make new characters in between episodes - perhaps we should have mentioned this. But everyone has been so imaginative and the story wouldn't have gone far without the characters you've dreamt up. Fortunately, we had a cunning plan! Making completely new character models would have taken too long, so we've gone green and done some recycling. If you've been watching closely, you'll have noticed that our female characters are the same from the neck down. Same goes for Otto and Kyle. We simply replaced their heads with new designs, avoiding the need to make complex new body meshes and rigging them up to move correctly - very time consuming. Simply changing the colours and texture of the clothes - a relatively easy process - helps to give the impression we've created a completely new character.

So here's Prof. Remi in a state of semi-completion. She started off as a Lyn, had her specs, earings and...er...head removed and a Remi head spliced on. Remi isn't quite finished yet. She's good enough to animate though, so you'll see her later this week in the rough animation.

Professor Remi - character design

Written by Helen Jackson.

Adam's been working on the design of Professor Catherine Remi this afternoon. Remi is a noted Belgian scientist in her seventies. She was a key member of the 2004 Challenger expedition to Southern Venezuela (it's the journal of this expedition that has been stolen by Grazp Pharmaceuticals). She's now being held captive by Grazp, alongside Aileen.

The design is complicated, though. Remi is a septuagenarian, but while she was on the expedition she was affected by the rejuvenative properties of the water. (She was the only person affected, and Bibliomane and Kiwi have worked out the seriously inspired idea that this is because of the Ikhata – a mysterious artefact Remi possessed, which unlocked the power of the water).

Anyway, the question is... how old does Prof. Remi look now? Has she reverted to her true age? Does she appear to be a much younger woman? Or, is she a little girl?

Mistress of disguise

Written by Helen Jackson.

Aileen's disguised herself as a delivery person from a courier company to sneak into Grazp Pharmaceuticals. We swithered for a while over whether she needed a different colour t'shirt to complete the disguise, and eventually went for green.

Trike Couriers's mascot is Samuel the Triceratops, named in honour of one of the readers of The Lost World Quick Read Edition, who used a password from the book to get into a secret post and tell us that his favourite dinosaur is the Triceratops. Thanks, Samuel!

Blinking Nora

Written by Helen Jackson.

Today, a glimpse into the animator's world through a tiny, tiny detail: blinking.

Making characters blink is easy. It's more-or-less free animation: it takes moments to do, and makes characters look alive even when they're not doing anything else. The blink itself comes from moving an eyelid over the eye: it happens over three frames (there are 25 frames per second, so this is 0.12 of a second):

People blink, on average, every 3 or 4 seconds. But, even a hypothetical perfectly-average person wouldn't blink every 3 or 4 seconds - we don't blink on an exact cycle. We might blink twice in close succession, and then not for a while. It depends on what's going on. Sometimes blinking is in response to events (if there's a sudden loud noise - a gunshot, say) and sometimes blinking - or slower eye-closing - communicates something as part of our body language.

So, animating blinks is easy. Placing them takes a little more thought. And, we hope, this is a little bit of animation that you, the viewer, won't ever notice - it'll only be noticable if we get it wrong.

Missing Lynx

Written by Adam Brewster.

We have a heavy animation day today, but before we get started I think it is high time I introduced you to Lyn(x). You named her, you've seen sketches of her, she appears in the storyboards and you've even seen glimpses of how we've been transforming her into a fully 3D Lynx, but here she is complete, limbering up for all the episode 2 action she is going to join Aileen in.

Character Building

Written by Adam Brewster.

Episode two is going to have a new character, you might have noticed. Having drawn myself into this particular corner a couple of days ago (the sketch you are all choosing a name for right now), I set about the challenge of making her into a fully animatable character! And here's how I did it. Um, here's how far I've got doing it so far, I should say.

Image 1 is the concept sketch you've already seen. Images 2 to 4 show the mesh model built within our 3D software (she doesn't have materials yet - which is why she's a bit dull and her specs are bright green!). I actually cheated a tad and used a lot of the existing Aileen model. Because we are tight on time, we decided to limit the scope of new characters. By re-using existing characters, and only changing their heads and clothing colour, we avoid the really lengthy process of building animatable characters from scratch while keeping a good level of character differentiation.

The next stage was a bit tricky - not without bloopers, that is. The red head shows how the head bone has total influence over the movement of the head section of the model. Image 6 shows the influence the neck bone has - more subtle movements required here. Some of the data for the rest of the body went a bit awol during the head sculpting process and I had to correct some pretty scary stretchy arm movements before finishing this bit. Then it was time to make her into a walking chess board and tweak the mapping. This is how the colours and textures are stretched across the surfaces and they need to be nice and even to work properly. Now I'm off to make one of those bizarre pictures where all the surfaces are unwrapped and we'll be done. All we'll need then is a name, and I see there are some good suggestions coming in.

Aileen unwrapped

Written by Adam Brewster.

I need to tell you about the stage I'm at with the visuals, 'cos it's quite fun. Now we've fixed all her movements we have to make our main character, Aileen, look good. As always, there are about a million possibilities, but we've always had a strong idea of how we want our main characters to look. The rather curious image above is what you get when you flatten out, or "unwrap", the star of the show.

So she goes from being quite a dull, but perfectly formed, sculpture to a bright, vivacious, animated model! Once the software has created the 2D image of the flattened surfaces it's quite easy to paint on the details. I'm not the world's most knowledgeable makeup artist so I'm not sure if you are supposed to leave freckles on show? Anyhow, she looks pretty good to me. Now we have to do a similar exercise for the sets and props.

An orange on a toothpick

Written by Helen Jackson.

Hello! I’m Helen. And, this is Aileen – on the bus, with her dog.

We’re finishing the animation for episode one.

Animation is fun. But, it comes with all sorts of problems. We’ve been asking questions like: ‘how fast can a dog read?’; ‘how do you react when your Mum goes all melodramatic?’; and ‘how can someone with a huge head move without looking off balance?’!

As this will be quite a constrained week for us, I’m putting a word limit on all blog posts and comments. Nothing over 100 words, please!