Finally I found some time for personal projects as I was swamped with work lately. For ages now I wanted to create an asian female.
I thought I take the opportunity to take those intrested along my journey, find some intresting intercultural facts, get some discussions about topology going, just make a “dairy” of Natsuki’s development.
Once done I plan to make Natsuki a CC download for all of you.
Right on, 3 days ago I pulled some reference out my archives and started. My first volitional problem came up pretty soon. The eyes.
As 100% europen bred, white as someone living in a basement can be, it was quite an adventure to “feel” the shape of an oriental face.
First task was to find out what the actual differences are. And surprise, there are almost none, the famous almond eyes are just like occidental eyes with slight differences.
Consulting the endless informations in the internet and reading into some plastic surgeon papers it became clear to me pretty soon.
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First big difference is that asian people got a bigger eyebrown fat-pad and it sits slightly lower, filling more of the upper eyesocket.
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Second difference is the Levator Aponeurosis(the muscle that allows you to open your eyelids). For occidental people it sits pretty high in the lid, extending down, so if we open our eyes, our eyelid almost rolls up to a single bulge. Asian people have a second fold caused by the low sitting muscle in the eyelid. It pulls the lid up, forming a fold in the middle of the eye. So this is either causing a double eyelid, or if it is not folding a “hanging” eyelid. Thats what is causing the almond shape along with:
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the Epicanthal Fold. It is a difference oriental and occidental people have in common. Its a web of tissue overlapping the nasal corner of the eye. For some its more distinctive, for some less and overall its more common and more distinctive for asian people and can have many different shapes.
I guess thats enough information for now. If you want to know more about it I recommend this site here for information on:
Difference between Asian and Occidental Eyelids
Asian Epicanthal Fold
With this information and after staring at asian eyes for 2 hours it was all clear and I was good to go.
I was all eager to practice organic face loops again, and pretty soon I came up with basic loops I could work with.
In order to have something to present to you guys I did some rough texture work, nothing fancy, really, just some projection painting from my actual reference images.
Blender Internal, SSS, AO, Raytraced shadows and reflections, 24sec/frame
I tried some new things (at least for me):
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I noticed asian people got distinct cheekbones, so I set the key-knot for it slightly higher and more to the back.
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I also noticed chubby cheeks on many reference images, that is why I broke one of the faceloops and redirected it to outline the cheeks.
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Then in the outer corner of the eye I pulled the loops back along the head instead of curving them back down into the cheeks. I´ve seen both lately, but I think when aging the base mesh, or for eye mimic those loops will do better.
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And last but not least I didn´t use the “common” boxhead, I tried to keep the flow all from the face up, over the forehead, back over the skull and down to the spine in one nice flow. I noticed in the make-human-project they actually went to use those topology too.
Now for the obvious flaws I am aware, but hey its WIP =)
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The ears are still a bit wonky, but rather than reusing “my ear” I made back in the stoneage and which I dont like anymore, I made a new ear.What can I say, I hate ears. IMO one of the most complex bodyparts with its doublespirals and twists and folds. You got to hate it… Stay away from them until you´r really familiar with organic modelling =) However, ears still need work.
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The back of the skull looks like a plank hit her. I had to cut some new loops to attach the ears, that what happens when you´r too lazy to reshape the skull, minor glitch though.
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The chin… I am not quite sure yet, but something really bugs me there, I am missing a nice loop somewhere.
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Texture and material, but thats for the final works, for showing stuff with a nice look its ok as it is. As I mentioned above, it´s just projection painting and SSS.
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And last but not least the outer corner of the eyes. They are not bad, but still need some work, after doing many heads I still got troubles fitting the eyelids around the eyeball =)
Task ahead is actually the body, I want to get some distance between me and the face for now. As for the body, I will start from scratch as well, I want to try some things topowise and need the practice =)
If you got until here you already read a lot, I hope I had some intresting stuff to offer.
Finally some trivial informations =)
Project: Natsuki
Kanji: 夏希 / Hiragana: なつき
夏 - natsu - the summer
希 - ki - the hope
So you know where the name comes from. It’s “summer-hope” a nice japanese name. As we all know many of us are having a hard time finishing projects, well I hope to finish mine this summer =)
For the current state of the project:
References, Research and base mesh with loops: ~2 days
Nose and Eyes: ~1 day
Ear and textures: ~ 1 day
Plan is to model it, texture it and rig it. I got some 2.49 rig I made a while back with a fake ik spline spine, breast movement, respiration movement and stuff, but I think I will use this project to get into 2.5s rigging. I hope no huge commercial project comes up eating away my free-blending time.