I had to move a lot of vertices around the eyes in order to create the blend shapes. I had to also keep checking that some of the vertexes were not overlapping. I also made sure that it flows around the eyes very well. Poor blend shapes equals a poor animation. Before i did blend shapes i was a bit worried because i did not know what to expect. But i actually enjoyed doing blend shapes.

Reference on blend shapes

I also found it useful to look at examples of blend shapes in order to know what i am dealing with. Looking at this piece of work gave me confidence to do my own blend shapes.
It gave me a rough idea of what i have to do.

Research on blend shapes

i did not particularly find this video helpful.

Reflection/Blend shapes

For the Owl i have created some blend shapes in order for the owl to have facial expressions. From speaking to Depa i know that the Owl is going to have a mechanical and slow movement with the eyes. So in order to make the animation affective i exaggerated some of the expressions. I made the eyes really wide open. It took me a while to do the blend shapes because i want the animation to be as smooth as possible. This requires a lot of patience. The more blend shapes i do the better the animation. Depa just wanted me to do 4 expressions because most of the movement is around the eyes.

Improvements to the Dove

I have gone into the outliner and i have painted the weights so that there is not any deformation. As you can see when i rotate the neck downwards the stomach is not going into itself.When i rotate the right arm up wards the mesh around the stomach doesn't come towards me. And when i move the neck to the side bits of the stomach do not follow anymore. It did take me a long time to paint the weights, but it was worth while.

Because i was having technical problems i had Clym help me paint the weights, but there are stil problems with the rig as shown above.

Reflection

So far i have rigged the wings of the dove. In the first image of the dove it is deformed and there are dents near the stomach. This is because it is not weighted properly. So what i did is go in to the outliner and add and reduce weight, and now the dove looks a bit evened out.

I found this book very useful as a basis on how to start rigging. What i found useful was that it broke everything down into bite size chunks.

This clip has helped me to get an understanding of how wings function. I will be referencing from this clip.

Rigging of the Dove

I will now attempt to rig the dove. The main things that will be moving will be the wings, the neck and the feet. I will be looking at tutorials online, for how to rig wings.

Reflection

So far when texturing the Owl i wanted it to look very stitch like.I feel i have managed to get the desired look that i was looking for. I have used a variety of colours, and materails to form a texture. I used a bump map as well in order to give the character more depth. There were some difficulties when texturing around the arm, it was slightly stretched. I took all of the information on board that Depa told me and i have executed it well. I made sure that the texture wasn't flat.I resolved the problem with the initial bump map. The bump map was too 3d and was starting to look like a toy. I toned it down a bit and it now have a better look. I looked at a variety of textures in order to make my character look appealing.I spent a lot of time on texturing and re arranging the layers in order to make the texture look more affective. I did not want to just do a mediocre job.
With regards to my tree it did take me a while to model. At first i was having difficulties with modeling it. This is because it was looking very block like and not rounded like how a tree should be. In order to improve it i rotated the edges in 45 degrees clockwise in order to make it twist. Uv mapping the tree was difficult because there is so much going on in terms of geometry. I came to the conclusion that automatic mapping would be the best way to map it. I wanted to keep everything flat.

Render tests

This was the first bump map test i did. It is not the type of look i am going for. So i toned down the bump map.

Bump map

Bump map test

Now that the Owl is modeled i now want to start texturing the model. But to re enforce that it is a stitch like look i am going for. I will be referencing patch work materials.

Below are some of the textures that i may use for the tree.

I feel i have made major improvements to the tree, in terms of getting the desired shape that i was looking for on the bark.

Reflection

So far modeling the tree has been a pleasure, the only problem i encountered was that the tree was looking very block like. So i went to my garden and i analyzed the tree more and i noticed that i haven't modeled it effectively.I need to add more circular lines to the bark.

My next target is to model a tree, and i will be using this image as reference.