UPDATE (3/4/2021):
Grandpa Nut Character Development
By Nicole Jansen
The first character being created for the semester was Grandpa Nut due to his importance in the story.
Concept Art
Grandpa Nut was created to be built off of the original Squirrel character's model. This allowed faster modeling and a display of the two characters being related.
Character Modeling
The squirrel model was reopened and unnecessary pieces of the model were removed. New details (such as Grandpa Nut's glasses and longer hair) were added to the model to make the character his own. Chantil Hunt Estevez (the environmental artist) created a rocking chair for the character to sit in based on the design of the forest. This was imported into the scene and added to the model before animation.
Animations
A specialized rig was created for this character in order to accommodate for the rocking chair. The character was given three animations: an idle, a talk, and a bow. No walk cycle was given to the character since one of his gimmicks will be teleporting around the forest while still sitting in his wheel chair.
Grandpa Nut Animations
Grandpa Nut Animations
Grandpa Nut Talk
Grandpa Nut Idle
Grandpa Nut Bow
Unity and Blend Trees
The character was then exported and brought into Unity to create a Blend Tree from the created animations. A Unity package containing the necessary Grandpa Nut assets, animations, and blend tree was exported and sent to the rest of the team for final integration.