26. GUITAR CASE

Since I was going with a guitar, I figured that one piece of additional set dressing must then be the guitar case. To be sure, this wasn't terribly difficult to model. I literally built the case around the guitar that I had just modeled.

I wanted to be sure to also model the clamps, and the hinges of the case in order to illustrate better detail. These are more details that were probably not even noticed in the film, and thus another aspect of the production where excessive detail might not have been required for the finished film. (However, one justification for this attention to detail might be future uses of these items, perhaps where more detail will be necessary (but maybe not).)

A key challenge for me in creating the case was setting up the case for modeling. Unlike simple doors that have perpendicular and straight points of rotation, the hinges of a guitar case are at an odd angle. To solve for this problem, I modeled a straight bar, which represented the pivot axis for the lid of the guitar case. This was helpful because then I knew where to place the joint, and how to articulate it, so that opening and closing the lid would make sense. Another way that this helped was that this bar also represented the one-dimensional line along which any hinges for the guitar case would have to sit in order to make the opening of the case seem realistic. To be sure, this is a place where photographic reference would be trumped by the physics of the animated world.

  

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