Meet the Eagle; he was intended for a visual gag in Boids Of A Feather, a trailer for Hash Inc. to demo during SIGGRAPH 1999. Eagle was to play the lead in a poker game, set in a murky back room full of the lowlife of the Cuckoo Club. The card players would all be cheating (hands full of aces), suddenly realize as they show their hands, and all quickly draw hidden weapons of all manor of description on each other. The shot was not submitted for the final trailer as the animator tasked with that scene didn't have time to complete the shot. Pity, it would have been a great visual shot gag (perhaps one of the best in the trailer)...
As I remember, Eagle came up quite late in the production time-line so his construction was based on a number of details from the other characters already complete. His head and facial poses were the only items needing construction from scratch. Shown below are sample images rendered during production to test out the facial setup, mesh, and texturing. I should really render out some proper poses for this guy - something else for my todo list ;o)
For those interested, I've left the original Eagle log notes here that the Boids Of A Feather team shared during character revisions.
[31st March 1999]
Eye/brow pose sliders complete. Corrected eye decal colour and materials. Fixed torso aim at torso target in Default pose. No other phoneme sliders yet. See sample renders below. -GaryM[26th March 1999]
Fixed CP bone allocation issue for correct scapula animation work. Added real eyes and pupil dilation pose slider. Updated materials. Minor mesh corrections. Still no facial setup. -GaryM[24th Feb 1999]
Amended Eagle setup including majority of leg bones and complete default pose reworked (animators beware). Added standard materials. Updated EagleHomberg materials. No facial setup yet. -GaryM[29th January 1999]
Eagle now has the basic setup and is ready for testing! --TGF[27th January 1999]
Eagle mesh ready for Thom to add the standard setup. EagleHomberg hat also included in Eagle_Props folder, Thomb, you'll want to adjust the location hat bone so that it translates/orients correctly to the head bone you add. -GaryM
Here's one of the very early renders of Eagle in his default pose with preliminary texturing. You can see, I hope ;o) how the subsequent renders have improved on the texturing and the eye mesh detail - pity he never made it into the Boids Of A Feather final sequence.
