Rough scene...

Here I've Merged the Dippy Bird and the glass into a rough scene to see how they look together. I had to Scale up the glass by about 30% to get it to look about the right size.
I've added a single Omni light above and in front of the bird to get an idea how much light will be required and from what direction.

Modelling the glass

Ok. although the fable calls for the crow to drink from a pitcher (jug) I've substituted it for a glass tumbler as this better suits the dippy birds height and allows the water level to be seen falling and rising.
I originaly tried to create the tumbler using the Lathe Tool it created an angular object which wouldn't of looked good in the close up scenes of the animation.
I then tried a Cylinder Standard Primitive with the centre pushed down. Scaling Rings of Edges gave me the required shape.


In this shot, I've applied Material to the glass and turned down the Opacity to give a see through appearance.

I then experimented with Mental Ray Materials to get the render below. Mental ray materials are only available if the render type is changed to mental ray in the Render Scene Dialogue box.

I then selected Arch and Design (mi) as the new template, then the Glass (physical) template. Adjusting the Reflectivity/Glossiness etc gave the result which I'm pretty pleased with.

My only concern is that the mental ray takes longer to render so may be unsuitable for the animation?

Check my dancin' boots! :oD

Head, body, wings, legs and boots are all Extruded from one original Primitive Object which is something I've tried to improve on from past models built up of seperate components.
He's pretty much done now and I need to try not to put any more detail on as it'll only add to the Polygon count.

Body and wings....

I've begun to model the body and wings now which is going quite well. I began by modelling the basic shape of one wing by extruding out polygons and shaping them into a rough wing shape. It soon became clear that I'd have to do the other one the same which would be time consuming. The tutor suggested I cut the model down the centreline and use the Symmetry function to mirror the wing over to the other side to model more efficiently.

The Symmetry function sits above the Editable Poly in the Modifier List so any changes I make to the polygons, they will be mirrored over to the other side.

'Tickling up the bird' ;o)

I've thickened up the beak a bit to make it more crow like, enlarged the eyelids a bit but as a cool add on, I've used the Look at function to get his eyes to track an invisable object. This will save a lot of time during animation as I now won't have to more each eyeball individualy.
Look one way.........

.......then the other........ :o)



I've also added some tufty bits at the back of his head to simulate feathers and a neck :o)

Modelling Dippy Bird.

Here's my first attempt at a rough dippy bird head. It's loosely based on the actual toy with some exagerated features.
The head is modelled as one group of polygons while the hat and eyes are kept seperate to help with moving them in the animation.