faye and spike of bebop

[dalron]

Hello everyone, this is my first submission. I’ve been learning blender intensively for about 3 months and I reckon it’s time to put something out there. I used 2.48 for these models and both are fully rigged though i’m currently redoing the spike spiegal one as the faye valentine is way more advanced technically (most recent of the 2) as my abilitys have improved. please let me know what you think so far as I intend to animate these models and I’m open to ideas on a scene they may be in.

BIG thankyou for all the tutorials out there. too many to name

[system]

faye’s head looks a little odd. I think either the hair might be too big or the face might be too small. Looking at a reference would help more than listening to me though.

Also her crotch area looks a little flat, it needs to bulge more.

Pretty cool so far

[dalron]

ooh thanks. I stuck to reference religiously when modelling the body, though with the shorts i did miss that (I only paid attention to the folds in that area).

the hair has been a nightmare. It’s made with 2 meshes/emitters, the first follows the hairline and sits close to the head (which i was happy with) and the second is above and overlapping the hairband that I haven’t been happy with.

some work will be done on these

[dalron]

here are some clearer pictures of what i’m trying to achieve with the hair:

[dalron]

after messing about with particles for too long and not being satisfied, i’ve been trying different ways.

it’s cartoon hair i’m trying to emulate so here’s a basic look at what approach i’ll probably be using.

any tips/ advice/ examples would be greatly appreciated.

[system]

yeah thats definitely the way to do it for toon shaded characters. Well thats what I think.

[dalron]

ok, so I’ve just re-done the hair, it may need tweaking (especially when the time comes to animate it).

The hairline section has way more vertices than I first intended to use, but I’ve made my peace with that seeing as I’m not using particles.

major4z- Thanks for your input, I’ve seen some of your work and I’m in awe dude. very fine indeed.

[dalron]

Been learning stuff.
i’ve made significant enough improvements to warrant an update so…

to list some of the improvements: An rgb normal map on the hair and transparent second mesh for the strands. UV unwrapped face with seperate diffuse and normal textures. no particles, no sss. ambient occlusion on.

also worth noting is I’ve modified the rig with a mesh deform modifier (spent ages trying to get it right). so extreme poses deform pretty nice!

I reckon I’ve pretty much finished this one.

[Zeekar]

I think you captured Spike much more convincingly, but both are excellent attempts at a difficult subject to capture: Anime characters. They are so heavily stylized that it’s nearly impossible to reproduce one that looks natural in a 3D setting while sticking to references.

That said, you did a great job. Maybe Mugen, Jin and Fuu next? Other works of Watanabe deserve love too!

[dalron]

Samurai Champloo? That’s one anime I’m going to have to get hold of now! bebop is in my top 3 for sure.

spot on with the comment, referencing spike was a lot better because I have a physical figurine of him with good proportions to work from. faye is referenced from anatomy- in the anime she is often drawn very correct (except her face). But I think that’s the very reason I haven’t attempted Edward yet. he/she is the most Anime stylee of the lot.

[Zeekar]

I rarely see anyone draw Edward correctly, much less model. Good luck with that if you try.

At any rate, hopefully without derailing the thread too much, I have to give my recommendation that if you liked Cowboy Bebop in any way shape or form you should love Samurai Champloo. It’s better in some respects – that it’s a more recent work and may be considered more visually refined as a result (not that Cowboy Bebop hasn’t aged well – it has).

On a more personal note, I find some of the character development to be more interesting by a slim margin in Champloo. Your results may vary. Enjoy.

[dalron]

After a little critique from a good bud, been doing some major tweakage. His words- babing it up

most of the improvements are barely noticeable, But almost everything has been tweaked, Including body details not shown.

Sorry if this pose is getting boring but it’s for comparative reasons…

I know I’ve been working on this one quite a while, but it would be pointless while I’m still learning stuff.

[dalron]

I recently read on someones post that time spent is 30% modelling, 70% tweaking. that is proving to be the case here- and then some!

That being said, I’m really happy to post these pics- but I don’t know whether I should put it in finished works yet.

This is all modelled poly by poly, all quads, no sculpting involved. 6 textures on the hair alone! (all textures hand drawn by yours truly) and loved every minute.

I’ve had an original character I’ve been wanting to start for a while now, and feel ready to tackle it now. but in the meantime let me know what you think.

[Renderluz]

looks great, the hair is spot on! abd face looks great!
the deformation of the shoulder tho is not quite there imo, it looks disjointed,

[dalron]

I don’t know if it’s my topology that’s causing that, the deform cage is very simple so I doubt it’s that.

I’ve highlighted the edge loop I considered would be most important, but I’m not experienced enough to know what would be best.
I was going to leave this until later but if I can nip it in the bud now, it would help me massively

[Consideringthepickle]

The arm looks too disconnected from the torso. I think you might need to bite the bullet and re-model the shoulder area so that the shoulder actually rests half-way on the torso/half-way on the arm. You want some of those edge loops coming up from the breast to be going over the shoulder itself. Lookup images of chest/shoulder muscles. Something like this is what you want:

[dalron]

much improved the shoulder mesh, Thanks go to Mikhail for the illustration above. my own anatomy reference is- how can I put it… a bit abstract.

I had to adjust the weight slightly on the deform cage as well, the only other thing I can do is make shape key fixes.
Do you think it’s improved?

I’ve adjusted the size of her head also. it’s needed it since the first critique from major4z, I thought the hair might have fixed the proportion but hey! We all have lapses from time to time.

[Consideringthepickle]

It looks like you’ve got more topology in there to work with, but the shape of the shoulder hasn’t changed much. It still looks like her arm is disconnected from its socket.

[dalron]

I think I’m getting somewhere, I’ve adjusted the position of the armature joins closer in, got clear results, could probably do with a bit of smoothing on top of the shoulder- but position-wise, does it look right?

[Consideringthepickle]

Ah, yes! It’s starting to look right. I think her head is too small still though. Or her neck too big.