Need some technical help: Low-poly character

Artwork Works in Progress
#1

So I’m getting into modeling lately for a project. We want to enter a game into a competition and ended up choosing 3d in the spec. I know a lot of the technical stuff about 3d production and how it fits in with programming, however, I’ve decided to try to do some actual 3d assets myself, and have a fear that my meshes are very “inefficient”, I’ve heard so much stuff all around about how to model low poly, such as “start with a box, and keep extruding”, but also came across some material online advocating “redirecting the geometry” or something as well. The method I’ve been using is using cylinders, connecting them with a lot of alt+m, and a lot of “s” and “g”. Here are some other questions I have:

  1. For low poly models, is extruding the last edge loops on clothing to give them depth best practice?

  2. If a model has clothes, is it a good idea to join the clothes with the body and then delete the underlying body geometry?(better for animation?)

  3. Are there any books/sites you could recommend for modeling for animation?

Also, it would help a lot if you could look at specific parts of my model and tell me what I’m doing wrong/right.

Attachments

lab_overseeer(UV Mapped).blend (520 KB)

#2

  1. Yes. I even saw models that are closed at cuffs (so that one cannot see that there is no body geometry bellow). It also helps with wrong facing normals in the game engine.

  2. Definitely! You want to eliminate all unnecessary polygons. For two reasons: game engine speed and no intersecting geometry

  3. From the top of my head: some truly amazing tutorials on blendercookie and ‘Character animation with Blender’ DVD from Blender foundation (I can’t recommend it enough).

Some mistakes in modeling: You need more edgeloops at elbows and knees. Otherwise they won’t deform properly.

BTW: For a new 3D modeler, you have done some really good job with your model. Keep it up!

#3

@Chatto The character is good. Maybe the hands are too small. Maybe it’s just the style you want.

#4

Thanks! Took me a while to get to this point already…(10-12 hours for this model). I’ve yet to practice enough to get speedy at this. I’ll look at the Blender Foundation DVDs and blendercookie!

@Benny: as far as the hands, we’re going for a stylized anime look. Our concept artist is…14 years old…but…well here, I love to show her work off:
http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/328/4/3/peenaple_cat_by_bichinhosdanet7-d33i095.png