I recently made this cat model for a series. I tried to go for a mixed style between realism and expressive, as it was requested by the head of the team. I’m pretty happy on how the body came out, while something about his face is putting me off and I can’t understand what; some team members said that he looks “weirdly mixed” with realism and should be more cartoony, although I don’t want to go too much into that as I’d like to keep a “mature” look.
I used Puss In Boots as a reference/inspiration for this style.
I think it’s the massive eyebrows. Cats aren’t supposed to have them, it makes the eyes look too human. Also, if cats did have them, they would probably follow the shape of the skull a bit more instead of being perfectly horizontal.
You say you are using Puss in Boots as inspiration. If you look at how they did the eyebrows, it’s a lot more subtle than this. They are implied by the shape of the head and a slight color change rather than a big bar of color.
If looking at the real thing… you can see (except for the rose patterned spot )
The green areas can indeed be “patterned” but the red ones are mostly not (just look at some others)… excpet for some very fine “dotted pattern”.
But looking at the blue lines the fur itself has some “direction” which could be interpreted as eyebrows. So it does have some potential to humanize some face expressions.
Thank you for your answers guys! I see how the eyebrows can “bother” the overall look. I’ll definitely see to fix this trait.
Also, for the rose on his forehead, it was supposed to be a 2D animated feature, but I’ll probably remove it as me and my team noticed that it doesn’t work as expected.
Whenever you’re going for a semi-cartoony or stylized look, it’s best to start from reality. Look at some photos of this breed of cat and decide which features are most prominent. Then exaggerate as needed to fit the look you need.
For instance, looking at the photo posted by Okidoki, features that stand out to me are the width of the head and the size of the ears. If you start by exaggerating those, perhaps you’ll get to a look that not only fits the bill, but will be uniquely yours, too.
I really like it and I agree with what it’s already said by others.
I’d just like to add something looked weird to me: the fur on upper head and on the ears is really short. Don’t know if it is intended.
Thanks for your help again! The fur on his ears is short, I do agree with this; as for his forehead, fur is short there because I wanted to make sure the rose symbol was visible enough, but, as I said previously, I’m gonna remove it, so I’ll make fur a little longer in that area
I’m actually working on a cat myself right now! Currently I’m obsessing over facial topology. I have an entire colony of references living in my back yard! I’ve been brainstorming an animated series about the colony over the last few months, but it’s slow going because I’m pretty new to organic modeling. Good luck with your own venture! You’re way ahead of me!
Below are some tips. I don’t mean to sound super-critical, but this topic is all I’ve been thinking about lately.
Cat ears are more open along the sides and base. Compare cat ears to rabbit ears to see what I mean. There is usually also a tuft of fur shooting upwards from the ‘floor’ of the ear, although the prominence of this tuft varies.
The lower jaw needs to be thicker, with more of a rounded shape in profile as it runs back from the lip. You can see the shape more clearly if you look at a cat skull.
From the angle of your renders, it looks like the brow and the bridge of the nose are too far forward. A cat’s forehead is usually fairly flat/shallow when viewed in profile, angling downward slightly from the ears to terminate with a fairly low brow. Fur can make this area look more rounded on some cats, but the basic shape of the top of the head is sort of elongated and flat. Some have almost no visible brow ridge while others have a clearly-defined ‘hood’. The bridge of the nose is also sometimes convex, although this doesn’t seem to be very common where I live. It could be from a particular breed or locale.
The front of the chest tends to thrust forward when a cat is sitting upright, and the whole neck is kind of snake-like, able to achieve very tight bends underneath the mass of the neck and shoulder muscles. How much the chest thrusts out does depend on position, though. There is a lot of muscle there, wrapping around the side and front of the shoulders.
The shoulder blades form a pair of small ridges just behind the neck, though these can disappear when the shoulder blades migrate more to the sides or front.
The higher the cat pushes the front of its body, the less visible the tops of the shoulder blades are because they migrate to the sides of the ribcage. It can crouch down and have them clearly protruding from the top of the back, sit partially upright and have them far to the front, sit mostly upright and have them thrusting forward a little less, or sit up very straight and have them disappear entirely to the sides.
Fun fact: A cat’s collar bone doesn’t pin the shoulders in place the way it does with humans. This allows them to rotate their shoulders all the way around to the front of the chest, making their bodies extremely narrow.
The back/torso can be divided into two main masses: The front mass consisting of the rib cage and shoulder musculature, and the rear mass which is mostly defined by the spinal arch, hip musculature, and dangling belly (usually with fairly long, thick fur and a bunch of loose skin). These two masses are very distinct when a cat is sitting.
When a cat sits upright (as in the picture with a human hand), the shape of the upper rear legs almost completely disappears, typically leaving just a hint of the knees with the feet poking out at the bottom. The flesh is highly mobile here, which is part of why the upper legs disappear.
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