Fooby the Kamikaze Watermelon

Artwork Focused Critiques
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This is a large project that I have been working on for the past few weeks. It involves a LOT of stuff that I’m totally clueless on. I’ve been slowly updating a WIP thread on another forum, but I need specific critique that only the blender community can contribute. This is a revisiting of one of my favorite “cartoon” characters, Fooby the kamikaze watermelon, from the old flash video the Demented Cartoon Movie. For starters, here is my reference and inspiration sheet.

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u35/Harpowithayoyo72/inspirationsheetcopy.png
inspirationsheetcopy.png1023×688 631 KB

Next up are the first illustrations pointing out where I want the project to go. I only post this because while it isnt cgi, I’ll need your help putting this concept into the scene itself.

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u35/Harpowithayoyo72/foobysketchconceptsheet.png
foobysketchconceptsheet.png1023×682 320 KB

This is the first modelling shot, with the watermelon texture. It’s handmade because I couldnt find any good tilable watermelon textures.

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u35/Harpowithayoyo72/foobyprogress1.png
foobyprogress1.png960×540

Some quick faces. He is technically an inanimate object so I just wanted to keep the mouth a cutaway of the watermelon and the eyes to be just googly eyes, but this is really unimportant until the rest of the scene is cohesive and more or less finished.

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u35/Harpowithayoyo72/foobyoptions.png
foobyoptions.png1022×409 317 KB

First composite shot, with the grass modelled and the camera set up more or less how I want it to be in the final render.

http://i164.photobucket.com/albums/u35/Harpowithayoyo72/FOOBYPROGREESS3.png
FOOBYPROGREESS3.png960×540 384 KB

This brings us up to speed, and I apologize for it being a whole lot for a first post. So, here are a bunch of things that I am concerned with right now:

  1. I want to make the watermelon more realistic and that means I will probably have to take my own texture pictures of some watermelon. As it stands it is a super simple model and I can afford to put a lot more effort into it. Any tips on lighting? I have briefly heard of projection painting and was wondering if that could be applied here, since I really dont know what it is.

  2. The smoke trail will kill me I swear. This is the BIGGEST thing I need advice with right now since I am completely new to particle sims. I could post some of my smoke test renders if it would help, but I really want to get a dirty black smoke blasting out the back with flames at the base of the rocket nozzle. And as far as making it into a trail, I’m clueless. Should I try to have the smoke emitter follow a curve through the trajectory of the watermelon? Or is there something I could do with forcefields to simulate a dirty rocket trail? There seems like many solutions that could conceptually be possible but I have no idea how to implement them or how effective a solution would be.

  3. Since he is so close to the ground, I want the force of the rocket to interact with the grass a little more. I’m barely touching forcefields for the first time, but what I need is a small area, strong wind to just push the grass around in the immediate area. How would I go about doing that. Any advice?

Thank you so much for looking this over and if you have any thoughts or critiques, I could use all the guidance I can get. I started this as a way to push my limits and learn more about blender but I’ve bit off a bit much this time. I’m completely dedicated to finishing so it’s only a matter of time/trial and error.

EDIT: This got posted to both the focused critique section and the regular WIP. Is there any way to delete one of the two (The thread in the WIP section)?

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Looking great! Maybe I can help out here.

  1. I’m not sure how the lighting can be improved on the watermelon, but I believe it might improve with some SSS (Sub surface Scattering). Pixar has a pdf somewhere about how they made realistic food for the movie Ratatouille, and the SSS was a big element in the realism. For the red watermelon flesh and the white rind you should give it some specularity to make it look shiny and juicy. Also, a normal setting on the texture will make it look slightly bumpy. Try researching realistic food rendering.

  2. If you’re new to the smoke sim, research it. Blendernerd.com has an excellent tutorial/guide on that subject. As for the trail, yes, you will need to set up a trajectory for the smoke emitter. For debris in the smoke trail, you could make another emitter on the same trajectory that emits rack fragments or sparks or something. I’m not sure how to use force fields, but it’s worth a try. Anyway, find that smoke tutorial on Blendernerd.

  3. Blender actually has a particle sculpting mode where you can push around the grass particles in the desired way. It is accessed in the same menu as Object Mode and Edit Mode and Weight Paint Mode in the bottom bar of the 3d viewport. The tools are pretty simple to understand, so you should experiment on a test scene to figure out the technique you want to use, then do the same for your grass.

And about the grass, you should find Blenderguru’s grass tutorial. He explains how to make grass look realistic by changing the settings for the particles and the materials. Following that tutorial will benefit the look of the grass.

Hope that helps! Great work, and keep us posted!

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Oh, and for the mushroom smoke shape you could sculpt that out as a model then give it a volumetric smoke material. For distant objects it’s usually ok to have less detail, to save time and computing power.