Hello everyone! I am rather new to Blender (again). I use to play around with it a number of years ago, and boy a lot has changed (granted I was never as good then as I am now). I have been just messing around with it a lot lately, making still life images using the cycles render. Now I am wanting to move on to something more complex. I tried making a human head (it proved to be too difficult trying to sculpt the mouth). I have been using some of the free tutorial videos from Blender Cookie.
Since the human head proved to be too difficult, I decided to try something that (I thought might be easier) and make a little cartoon mouse from a sketch I found online.
This here is the image:
Now, my question here is, if I am starting out with a cube, then adding a modifier (multiresolution) then subdividing it after sculpting the head a little at a time, what I would like to know, is by doing it this way, I ran into some difficulties making the body. Would I rather make the body, feet, and arms all separately? Or would I be better off just sculpting it all from my starting sphere?
Also, with something like this, what would the easiest way to make the arms and legs/feet be? I am hoping to also animate this after I am done (if that is a possibility). I am really just looking to improve upon my skills using Blender.
if you are using multires, there’s no need for subsurf. also, dynatopo is better than multires. have you checked out dynatopo? this guy looks simple enough though, that you probably don’t need those things. I would try getting as far as you can with box modelling, or maybe use sculpting, then retopo the sculpted mesh. this guy can be done with a minimum of polys, imo.
Okay, so. What I have done so far is create the head and ears as 3 separate objects so far. It looks okay. I used multires on all three objects to sculpt them. I have no clue if I am doing it right or not. But it looks alright so far. If you’d like, I can save the image and post it on here.
Biggest challenge with that kind of reference is to see the forms, at least to me. That’s why sculpting helps as a first step.
I box modeled one version of the head quickly, see if this sort of form is what you’re looking for. For animation purposes this would need a bit more loops at least on the eye area.
JA12, I am glad that this is good for animation, as that is what I’d like to (eventually do) with this character, assuming I can ever model the character. Haha, I was playing around with it today at school and here is what I have. And pardon me for it looking kinda terrible.
Well, it depends on what kind of motion is required. After few adjustments, one I modeled could talk, close eyes, wiggle ears and have some motion around other areas. But depending on the required expressions, it might need a lot of work. Cartoon characters are really bad in that regard, they could have a wide range of motion or otherwise extremely challenging deforms.
Assuming that you started with sculpting, perhaps focus on the major forms first (head shape with the neck, snout) and then gradually move to smaller detail. Add eyes early so that you know the relation between chin/snout to the eyes and how to shape the eye area. Rhinarium could be a separate object since it’s likely a separate object in the final too.
If you’re going to do a retopology pass, you don’t have to start sculpting areas such as inside of the mouth. Suggestive lines behind the lip/lips would probably be enough because you could later extrude that area in further to form the mouth.
How it looks only matters if the look is relevant to your question. In my opinion support forum is not the place for pretty pictures anyway, just informative ones. But this reminds me of one thing about the looks - If you are viewing the character very close in perspective viewmode, it will look distorted because of the viewport camera lens that has focal length of 35mm (properties panel (N)). 35mm is close to human eye but it’s not good when working close to the model. In my screenshot two lower viewports are set to 60mm but as high as 80 or 90 mm might be needed, depending on the situation.
With the animation, I am really just looking to do something incredibly basic to learn how to do it…with the rest of what you said. Ah, I don’t know what most of that means/ how to do any of it… Haha
If only there was a tutorial that I could find that covers what it is I am wanting to do. :s
The mouth could use some more work to make it look better, here I modeled the ears and head as one. Ears could use some work, there is an edge that is out of place (not sure how to fix). Area around the nose needs some smoothing out too… I could probably do it, but my laptop doesn’t have the GPU power to do it. Running a 560M in it compared to my GTX 660 3gb OC in my desktop (that currently doesn’t work. Haha) but I am not sure if there is enough geometry there to do it, and make it look good. I am curious to know, does anyone here have any cartoon references that would be easy for a beginner to practice on for sculpting? This one is fairly easy, but there are just some things that are really problematic (such as the ears and the area of the snout around the nose).
