Started modelling the set, and experimenting first with how it might layout and how the Matte painting could fit in as well. I wanted to keep the Maya set small and make it bigger through the Matte paintings and limiting how much I would have to model. But when I make the paintings and add the lighting I will be adjusting the set, but with this I just wanted to use it to see how it could layout and how I will have to UV it later. 

Finally I designed the mouth and tongue for the Finch and duplicated the head to fit on the separate models. I have kept all of the duplicated on one file, so I can make adjustments more easier and rigging as well. The next step I need to move onto now is rigging and testing it out in a Pre-Viz, but so far I am happy with its designs and how the mouth has turned out.

Like the Saddle back I made the open mouth tortoise using a duplicate of the original to see how it would compare to the animated one, side by side. Again I will be trying with this one to pair up the closing mouth and the stretched neck, as well as its expressions as this tortoise has a wider variety of expressions than the Saddle Back, so I need to find a way to express them either in Maya or using Adobe Illustrator.

Manged to model the mouth and the eyes for my main tortoise character. I wanted it to look as believable as possible, even though a lot of it is going to be filmed from a side angel. The character will be eating  leaves from the trees and stretching its neck in different directions, so the next thing i need to do is rig the neck to move in different directions in sync to the mouth opening and closing, but overall so far I like the design and I think the realistic shape and the style of the tortoise blend in well.

Decided to try and animate an extension on the neck before I go back and improve some of the Saddle back tortoise, I wanted to see how the raised extension on the neck would hold up and I managed to get it to work in the end by altering the lip on the shell near its neck to all it to fit the extension of the neck, which I something that I think I will do in all the models before I duplicate them and add texture, so they all match.

After designing the base design for the Saddle Back I decided to back track and redesign its middle half because I didn't feel it looked as connected as I would of have wanted it to be. The tortoises I have designed from three different cubes, one for the head so it can be extended back independently from the shell, while still looking normal, so rather than connecting the whole of the tortoises inside, I decided to separate  them to make rigging and animating its neck and legs easier, which then left the shell which sits on top. For the simple extension of the neck I decided to practice it on the saddle back and have a back up animated model incase I needed it later on in the project. I did it by pairing the neck of the tortoise with an extended duplicate version of it, keying the neck going in and out across 200 frames to see how it would play out. So far I like how it turned out, but I feel that I might need to experiment a bit more with the extension as in the st...