Month: April 2013

So far, after drawing out carefully what the feel and look of my final design would be, I have taken my time keeping my model low resolution and worrying more about the form itself, as well as proportion.  With a good underlying, low-res geometric form, sculpting in the higher resolution details will be more effective.
I made an alternative design decision that instead of modeling the mantis as separate components that I would rig for posing, I will instead model a continuous form since rigging the model with bones will deform the mesh in a cleaner, more realistic fashion than using ball-joints that I would mold to the pose like I originally thought I would do.  Hence the title of this post.  I’ve been vertex stitching my disparate pieces so I can create a continuous form….it may not look like much now, but experience has shown me that attention paid to the low-res form in the beginning will lead to effective rigging.  Bones that deform a mesh use areas of influence to pull vertices around, given user-set tolerances, or “weights.”  However, bones can, when pulled in certain ways during the posing stage can lead to very odd deformations if the underlying mesh isn’t correct, so I’m being very careful so I save myself a great deal of agony later when it will be a bad idea to edit the mesh once it is rigged….

Note that the raptorial legs and back legs are not in their final rest pose.  I will flatten them out once vertex stitching is done.

Just some initial sketches….the goal was to capture the various kinds of emotions I needed to recreate the drama of the scene and yet stay within the physical reality of the mantid’s anatomy.

Target Clip:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es1OJfSDthI

I chose to examine the final battle between Rocky Balboa and Drago (the Russian antagonist boxer) in “Rocky IV” (1985).  I’ve always enjoyed the constructed boxing matches in the more heroic setting (my father, brother, and I would watch these kinds of movies), and especially the Rocky movies’ tendency to have the boxing protagonist, Rocky, take a tremendous beating (sometimes not even protecting or guarding himself properly as a good fighter would) and then deliver the final knockout blow (or blows) to ultimately win the match.  As a Martial Artist myself, I was also drawn to the recreation of a fight scene, and even though this is in the context of the sport of boxing, it made me think of the Randori matches characteristic of the practices I went to (of course, those were never as intense as a Rocky match, and keeping up one’s guard was much more important).  The key moments in the clip are when Rocky finally delivers a few good blows to Drago after all seemed lost all too soon (this also shows that Rocky does stand a chance against this mighty opponent and this will prove to be a good fight) and when Rocky delivers the final critical blows to Drago, as triumphant music plays and the key secondary characters and the audience cheer, leading to the mighty Russian warrior’s collapse and the protagonist’s incredible victory.  The primary thing that I intend to change about this story is the character species:  instead of recreating this final climactic scene where Rocky turns the tide of battle and secures victory wholesale, I shall have the boxers be Praying Mantids (in boxer shorts–4 legged ones) instead of human beings.  I feel that Praying Mantids would not only be a unique re-interpretation of this iconic movie scene, but appropriate in the sense that these hunting insects brutally attack their prey with their raptorial legs, which not only rest in a “praying position” (which has given the insect its nickname), but what I feel to be a “put ’em up” boxing style, defensive guard-like position.