Poster style still

Here's the first picture of the campus. It's a good start, and the backgrounds will only get better.

I've tweaked the settings for the cartoon shader so that the characters' faces are lit crisply and evenly, regardless of how dark the scene is. I also made Claire's nose smaller, and lowered her cheekbones a bit.

I'm feeling very good about the look of the show, and the backgrounds and the characters' faces will get better and more detailed.

Further revisions

Claire

Goofing Around

Toon Shaded

This is likely to be close to the final look of the show. A bit more graphical, and closer to the show's 2d origins.

The three together

This is looking a lot better. I'll be painting better eyebrows, refining Bradley's face, and adding better hair textures to all three.

Better

Today I styled Moon's hair and figured out some skeleton issues. Moon's hair took longer than I thought, and I added some morph shapes so that the left and right bangs can sway back and forth. I'm thinking that Moon could regularly be brushing hair out of his eyes, or he could flip his head back when his bangs swing down. I'll be adding a better hair texture tomorrow.

I also fixed the crotch issue, and made the pants more baggy.

I still need to make his eyebrows, but the character is fully ready to animate, with moving eyes and all.

Early sample

Here's an early sample of the three main guys in 3D. Still need to do the hair and fix the uniforms, and I think my earlier 3d rendition of Bradley looks more like the original 2d version, so I'll make his face less round and youthful.

These faces have a large library of morph shapes, so they are capable of a wide variety of expressions. Tonight I'll be adding skeletons to them and learning how to transer movements and poses from one character to another, which will be a big time saver. I think I'll only need to make one walk cycle, then transfer the movement to the other characters and customize the walk for each character.

I'll also be able to make a library of hand shapes that can be transferred to every character in the show.

So things to do right away: Hair, uniform fixes, skeletons, and then finish Claire and add a cloth effect to her skirt.