Sean Huxter - 3D Animator (Lightwave 3D)

JANI-TOR

JANI-TOR Walk Test 13.3 sec movie - 160x120 - janitor.avi - [1.2Mb]
JANI-TOR Rough Cut 1:05 - 160x120 - jan2.avi - [6.6Mb]

This image represents the first test of an animation I did in early 1998. I storyboarded the animation and began modeling the objects needed. The idea was inspired by a trip to the Boston Museum of Science one day. We attended the lightning show, and were treated to some very exciting electrical effects. I took the visual experience I had that day and tried to put it into an animation.

For this movie I created the character of JANI-TOR, a robotic caretaker who roams the corridors of a research facility apparently oblivious to his surroundings. He started out as conceptual sketches, and evolved a little before I began making the computer model.

Then I drew up a rough outline for the story in pencil, and transferred that to my work book and penned over it to create the storyboard. I used it to set up scenes, and tried to get them fairly close to the concept. But this storyboard was meant to give me a good idea of what the final frame would look like, but circumstances change. If I model the setting, it may turn out that the camera angle I drew on the storyboard frame wasn't going to work perfectly, so I'd change the frame to work for the video, after all that's what storyboards are for.

I modeled him as one piece at first, placing all the individual parts on one solid model that couldn't be animated. Then I separated out the parts and placed them in a setup scene that fit the solid model.

The first thing I did in Lightwave was to create two test animations for the electrical effects. If these didn't work out, the whole animation would have to be revised. One test was of the arc spanning the balls of a slightly modified Van de Graaf generator, and the other was of the arc rising up a Jacob's Ladder. (Both play a part in the final animation.) The two scenes turned out very well. One is featured in this .AVI. The .AVI is rendered at 15 fps, which removes some of the nicer subtleties of the lightning arcs, but shows it off fairly well, and at half the download size.

(Note the fact that the loping walk bounces the abdomen up and down quite a bit, but the body stays rather steady. The silver abdomenal sections squeeze together and contract to accommodate the movement, as a kind of hydraulic shock-absorber.)

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