Need some quick pointers.

Support Modeling
1

I’m going to be doing a project that involves a little different work than what I’ve been doing. I mostly model hard stuff like starships and such, but my latest project involves an organic item.

I’m going to try modeling an alien (think typical grey skinned big headed version) forearm reaching down out of space , bending at the elbow, the forwarm coming forward in a 3/4 and holding a puppet control. Think a little like the symbol on “the godfather” and you’ve got it.

So I want a simple, basic, skinny alien grey arm reaching down from the top of the pic, swinging forward at the elbow and holding a puppet control in an alien hand, say 3 fingers and a thumb. Could someone kindly direct me to a good tutorial on making this?

2

If you’re going to model this, that’s one thing - you have your blueprints - set them up and model like a car, plane, you now the process.
What you’ll end up doing probably is sculpting - the hand, the rest can be modeled or course. So start to ask G friend to show you some sculpting/retopo sessions.
To sculpt you need some base object to work on. Skin modifier applied to some Ctrl-click-added vertices representing skeleton of the hand is easy and fun. Like so e.g.

Then again - you are the only one knowing what exactly you want, so do not expect ready to use tutorial for how to create such an alien thing.

3

Well, how about a regular hand/arm and I can make it look alien later? I think it might be easier to learn how to set up a rig to bend the arm and fingers but would need to learn rigging, I gues. any good tuts on that?

4

The skin modifier is really the way to go, after you’ve blocked out the basic shape you can then add a rig with one click(from the T panel I believe).

5

Is there a quick tutorial on this?

6

In a couple of sentences: on default cube - in edit mode delete all vertices. Ctrl right click to add a vertice in order to start building your skeleton. Keep adding vertices keeping in mind that this is a skeleton - bones. To branch, select vertice you want to branch from and again ctrl- click.
When done add Skin modifier. Add Subdiv too while at. It’s better from now on to use wireframe mode - select some vertice and Ctrl A scale “skin” at this point. As a last operation - on the Skin modifier tab click Armature.
Mark Root - that’s the vertice where armature starts; Equalize Radii - for symmetrical parts equal skin size.
More detailed answers -here
YT has a lot of examples for sure.

7

Here is tutorial on Skin modifier:

8

thanks, I think I found a tutorial that works with an existing hand, this seems to be what I needed but I also like the vidtut above.