I came back from holidays this week and was greeted by the finished retopology for Rex. So I took this opportunity to do a full UV unwrapping pass on the new topology so we have grounds to do the actual shading on.

For this first week since I am back from the holidays I wrapped all the main character with only minor tasks left to do. All the teenagers and the sprites are signed off and the files cleaned up so that they are ready for retopology. This also means that more sculpting files will be uploaded to the Cloud for people to download.

Last week I spent my time exploring several sprite activities. When Ellie encounters the sprite village, what does she actually see? This is an ongoing conversation with Matthew (director) to explore habits, games and chores for the sprites to be busy with. Here you see a few of these explorations listed. Do you have an idea what sprites might be up to in their natural habitat?

This week I mostly focused on designing the environment of the mushroom grove and sprite village. What are the sprites actually up to all day? I also started a new piece of concept art that further defines what we established in the colorscript. And a snail got to express itself!

Updated Rex's rig helper face mesh. Completed retopology on Ellie's head with inner mouth, teeth, rig helper face mesh, and shape key tests; Ellie's head is ready for rigging. Retopologized the hands of time.

The first week of the year was spent on getting Rex closer to a "final" state, with grinding down the TODO list for him and addressing the final bits of animator feedback (until more comes up, of course).

This week I did more environment asset work to prepare the first sets. Simultaneously, the development on Blender's Geometry Nodes system is ramping up, so I really wanted to give this a go and see how we can utilize it for the forest!