I used the automatic unwrap to create my character’s UVs and imported them into substance painter to create the textures using software provided materials.
For simpler textures, like the eyes, I used the Hypershade tool.
Texturing in Substance painter
I used substance painter to texture all my assets, using only materials provided on substance share.
for the mushrooms, I used apple, banana and potato textures in various overlays and for the tree, I used the rough wood texture.
Modelling Tree in Zbrush
I also modelled the tree and the treestump in Z brush, however this time I kept the polycount fairly low so I wouldn’t have to retopologize the models. As both models would only exist once in the whole scene, they didn’t need to be as low poly as other items.
Retopology
As previously mentioned I didn’t have to retopologize the seal so I only concentrated on the polar bear for this. I used Maya and followed the tutorial provided in class.
retopology in maya
In order to retopologize the mushrooms I followed Manos’ tutorial on retopology that he provided during one of our Animation Practice classes
The storyboard
1. starts out of focus, a piece of ice in the foreground comes into focus. A pom pom appears behind the piece of ice and it is wiggling around.
2. The seal is appearing from behind the ice, only until it can glance past the edge of the ice piece.
3. camera changes to the back of the seal, looking across his shoulder. A polar bear appears in focus, the background is still blurred. the polar bear is looking for something, turning to left and right. the seal is retreating and the camera follows until the polar bear has completely disappeared behind the ice.
4. The seal moves his head towards the side and glances around the ice piece from the side. the camera follows and the polar bear is gone.
5. camera returns to the front of the seal. the polar bear is standing behind him, smiling slightly viciously, holding his hands like he is about to attack the seal.
6. close up of polar bears hands. polar bear reaches out, holds (to build suspense) and taps the seal.
7. Seal turns around and smiles at the polar bear. you can hear a little laugh.
8. / 9. seal and polar bear are rolling down a hill, play fighting, crashing into a pile of rubble and trash. trash starts flying through the air and landing in the sea. A piece of ice breaks off and floats away.
10. the camera rotates to a top view. you can see that the polar bear and seal are trapped on a little piece of ice in the ocean with a lot of cracks in it. they hopelessly sit at the edge of their home.
11. white text on black:
Their home is melting & only you can stop it!
24th May 2019
#Fridays for Future
fridaysforfuture.org
Modelling mushrooms in Zbrush
I started out modelling the mushrooms in Zbrush to get a base that I would then import into Maya for retopology and to mix up the variety a bit by deforming the vertices.
I drew inspiration from real mushrooms, however they don’t represent a specific species.
for the decorative mushrooms I chose Tawny Grisette, Crimson Waxcap, Rosy Bonnet and Blue Roundhead.
For the tree mushrooms I chose the Inonotus hispidus and the birch polypore.
https://www.wildfooduk.com/mushroom-guide/birch-polypore/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inonotus_hispidus#/media/File:Inonotus-hispidus01.jpg
https://www.wildfooduk.com/mushroom-guide/
Making cuts
Now due to illness I wasn’t really able to continue working on my game I would have liked to, cutting down my time that I would have needed to complete my vision the way I wanted to. So I had to come up with a new solution, meaning that I will have to scrap the second level and entirely focus on the first level to get this finished and working by the end of the deadline.
Modelling in ZBrush
The polar bear:
I started out with creating a more realistic looking bear, as I wanted to challenge myself and create something a bit closer to photorealism than what I had done up to this point, but still make it anthropomorphic.
As you can see in the pictures above, I definitely succeeded in creating a more realistic looking bear, however I didn’t like the way it looked at all, at least not for this project, so instead of continuing with this one I started creating a new, more stylized and humanoid character which is a combination of both character designs.
I did give the character a quick texture paint in ZBrush, just to give a general idea of what it was supposed to look like later.
The Seal:
This is the finished Zbrush model of the harp seal. for some reason, I managed to use a lot fewer polygons on this model than on the polar bear while keeping a similar look. therefore this model won’t be needing retopology.
Designing the characters
Year 2 Animation Blog 
