Hey guys,
I’m fiddling around with blender for quite a while now focusing mainly on modeling… and now i decided to be more active part of the community, beginning with this thread. About 3 years ago i started moving cubes in blender and got immediately hooked.
Currently I’m modeling these two guys, trying a cartoonish style.
Obviously they aren’t finished yet, but i think they are far enough modeled to be shown.
My goal is to get them ready for animation, in other words fully modeled, textured and rigged.
Comments, critique, question and suggestions are welcome…
Woah, this is Pixar quality al’rite! Can’t really think much to crit about. Everything looks so smooth and even, maybe a bit too much? Adding detail to that girl’s pants, like belt and pockets and maybe something relating to that dino (I assume these two are part of the same scene) would spice it up. Also that dino’s skin look a bit too simple to me. Maybe if you added a few slightly bumped spots to it (of the same color as his “nose”) would make it more interesting.
And actually I just noticed, that girl’s hips look a bit weird to me, like that part was too tall or something. I know she’s not intended to have J.Lo’s booty or anything like that, but adding just a tiny weeny bit of curvature wouldn’t hurt that bad.
thanks for the reply, that’s really a nice compliment.
You are right, the clothes really need some work. I just wanted to put her some pants on. she is a little shy. :eyebrowlift2:
The dino isn’t textured yet, just some basic placeholder materials for me to work with. Your bumped spots idea sounds nice, I think I’ll give it a try.
yeah, she is definitely not supposed too be super curvy, but I’ll give her hips another look.
I’m not quite sure about the setting or scenario yet. I just liked the girl with tiny creature idea (still inspired by Sintel:yes:), then I found my old dino-riders triceratops toy some days ago and one thing led to another…
Looks good, would suggest animating the girl then because you should be able to get a good animation out of that. Maybe do a short film cuz you have a good concept. Maybe at the end the dinosaur thing is full grown and sitting on a couch fat and drinking soda. Or maybe she walks it and it takes a small crap that she cleans up and then walks it when its full grown huge and it craps gigantic and she just stares at it like “wtf”.
the character modeling is very good,(as far as the human) but your protoceratops(i’m sure it’s not supposed to be any particular species but that’s what it looks like to me:)) could use a little work. first of all i get kinda tired of seeing cartoon dogs and cats(and dinosaurs) with only three tows.(no offence at all:)) he should have at least four tows, that’d be a good number for a more cartoony model. and the over all the dino model could just use a little work here and there. look at the wikipedia page on protoceratops (you don’t have to read anything on the page if you don’t want) and look at some of the images there. and since yours looks like a baby dino maybe take a look at this. of course i’m not saying your dino should look exactly like a real one, your human is cartoony but yet still has features of real humans,(like the neck muscles and the over all shape of the arms and hands) but your dino doesn’t share many feature with real dinos.
Looks good so far Have you rigged your models? If so how does the geometry deform? I’m certainly no expert on rigging but it looks like you may need to work about around the pet’s legs to make the loops deform friendly. I may be wrong and someone please correct me if I am (chipmasque anywhere?). Great job though, they have a very toy-like quality to them
thanks for the kind and constructive comments so far.
I would like to get some animation done with them, lets see how long I can stay motivated…
@ John A.M. You’re probably right about the three toes being overdone, but I was going for a kind “triceratopsish” style, so I think the recurring of the number 3 (three horns, three toes, maybe groups of three bumpy scales on the texture) isn’t the worst thing in the world…:eyebrowlift2:
Her hair is on my to-do list.
Overall I’m not quite satisfied with the little dinosaurs (body-)topology myself since I started him freestyle without much planning. I’ll have to look into it again. UV-Layout and textures aren’t done yet so it’s still a good time for some bigger changes…
I hope I’ll be able to get some things done this week.
I liked your imagination. If you work with proper hard work and dedication , then you will definitely become a very successful animator. I just want to wish you all the luck. Do share some more such work of yours…
hey,
no updates or improvements yet, but I wanted to share some clearer pics of the wires to critique.
After looking at the girls wire again I can see the problem with her missing curvature. I’ll see what I can do without exaggeration.
Any suggestions where i can study some decent and basic topology for four legged creatures?
thanks for the help.
I made some changes to both of them. The girl has got some subtle curves now.
And I changed some of the dino’s topology, looked at some triceratops pictures and tried to improve his body and facial features. I think I’ll leave him like that, if nobody points that I’ll run in some major problems rigging him. :yes:
think about the girls clothes, perhaps a dinosaur related theme or something Flintstones like? I have really no idea yet :(.
finishing the girl’s texture (including hair)
texturing the dino
rigging the girl
rigging the dino
an most important: think of some nice names.
And I couldn’t help myself and started today with some shape keys. I have a chaotic work flow:o .They obviously need some work but i think it’s not a bad start…
the shape keys look nice, like you said They obviously need some work but they are good. one thing gets me though,(which perhaps i should mentioned earlier, but didn’t think of it) how old is the girl supposed to be? teens, young adult, what? now to mee she sorta looks mid-late teens but her face kinda looks young adult, if she’s a young adult the head should be smaller, if teens the facial features should probably be softened(and probably more…).
for the dino all i can suggest is to look up Ceratopsia(relatives of triceratops) on Wikipedia, or of course just do some searching on the web.
mhm, she kind of aged some years during the modeling process. She’s supposed to be late adolescent, i think.
I always thought her face looks a little bit younger then the rest… your comment kind of confuses me . The age thing is really hard to get right. But I don’t think I’ll change much about it, I’m quite satisfied.
Yeah I did my research about the whole certopsia family ( i could spend hours reading wikipedia articles…), but i want him to keep some puppy features, especially the snout… i think it adds some cuteness…
Not too sure about the eye area though.
thanks for your comments…
The age is fine. It’s open to interpretation, close enough to what you are going for. The voice and acting choices will define the age if you use this in an animation. I think she is a flexible, well rounded character, very nice work. Shape keys look nice too.
I tweaked both models a bit. Mainly the dino’s head (removed the big gap between the eyes) and some definition on legs and arms of the girl. Also thinking about adding some epoccipitals to the neck frill. I’m not sure yet. :spin:
And I started again with some basic clothes. I decided to make a summer dress, because we had a nice and warm spring day. Nothing fancy yet. But I want to keep it simple since I do not have much experience in animating, especially not with clothes.
Enough for today.
Good night.
Marco
After watching Angela’s tutorials on the Sintel DVDs I tweaked the shape keys of the girl quite a bit. I call them finished (although I’ll never be able to stop tweaking…:o). And I did some minor texture work.
Right now I’m struggling with the hair. Originally I wanted to keep the hair mesh. I tried to paint textures by hand but I failed two times and now I’m trying to recreate the hair following this method http://vimeo.com/7508405 .
i finally found some time to play around with the rigify addon. All the bones are nicely organized, so it’s easy to study and use and it has those nice custom buttons which are really convenient.( don’t think I’m able to recreate them… :o)
I couldn’t get the shoulder area to work the way i wanted so i added some more deform bones with (mostly) stretch to constraints to the rig.
. The age thing is really hard to get right. But I don’t think I’ll change much about it, I’m quite satisfied.
and now I’m trying to recreate the hair following this method 
