Here are some more links to ideas about creating interesting characters, this time from the game industry. Some of these links require a login to Gamasutra, a game developers website. If you don’t have an account, you might want to consider getting a free one. There is a lot of good information regarding AI, map making and following, etc.
Building Character: An Analysis of Character Creation
Character Development techniques in Games
I have been trying to make my robot Flik into a pet for my desk at work for a while now. My first thought was “How do I make Flik have character? A personality?” I realized that animators have been giving inanimate objects personality for years, so I started there. Here are some links that I turned up regarding how to give “life” to a drawing…
Principles of Animation: Notes from Ollie Johnston
Tricks to Animating Characters with a Computer - John Lasseter
Here is the short version of what I took from these articles: The character (or robot) should have a goal, a reason to do something. Only then should it move or act to accomplish that goal. The goal or purpose behind the action is what makes it interesting, not neccesarily the action itself.
Above is a link to Pixar’s Luxo Jr. page. I just downloaded the short film on iTunes and watched it several times. Definitely inspiring. The animator never takes any liberties with the lamps construction, no squashing or bending , yet they clearly have defined personalities. I especially like the little eager “butt-wiggle” that Jr does.
Here are some more animated lamps that I found on YouTube:
Just to keep everything well linked, here are a few places to see some of my robots…
A buddy of mine (Thanks, Peter!) gave me a couple of these motor/wheel combos from HSC Electronic Supply. He said that since they were not geared, they weren’t torquey enough for a robot, but after a little brainstorming, we came up with this application…
Just a little shimming to get the right distance between the wheels so that the ball is grabbed correctly, and ZOOOM! This thing really gets a ping-pong ball moving, hard enough to hurt. For anyone else who want to try this, I am using a 5V power supply, but I am thinking 6V worth of NiCads ought to work well. The motors in parallel pull 4 amps on startup and about 1.5 amps no-load. They are quite loud as you can hear in the video, so don’t plan to sneak up on anyone.
I am thinking a tube for auto feed, a solenoid to press the ball into the wheels, a few ping pong balls, a motor controller on each side to allow for spin, and this thing could be really cool.
