Hola!
I’m working on a new short and I would appreciate some critique and commentary. Here are my first two characters, an old man and a young boy.
Please keep in mind I’m not going for total realism, more of a cartoon Pixar-like look actually.
The boy character looks pretty good. the old man, i really don’t know what is off but something is a bit weird. The hair on the boy is great.
Well, the old man is missing eyebrows. I decided to make the little boy’s eyebrows a texture, but I’m still deciding what to do about the old man’s. Any suggestions on that would also be appreciated.
The biggest problem I’m having is that I don’t know how I want to animate the eyebrows. I’m thinking I’ll probably go with a bone from the armature manipulating the eyebrows and whatnot. The only problem with that is I need the skin and eyebrows to move at the same time.
Edit: I found this:
the old man looks very young, needs wrinkles, warts, scars perhaps? you could copy the head, take it into sculpt mode, add wrinkles, then make a normal map out of it
just an idea…and move the boys arms more to his shoulders
The topology in the meshes need some work. You need better topology to get the shapes you want. I’d suggest finding wireframes of other humanoid models people have done, and look at the edge loops.
The loops around the old man’s mouth extends down his chin; this tends to cause problems, I’d suggest having them end mid-way or less. Again you can find references on the internet for how to best do this.
Also the torso topology may need some work, depending on the shapes you want (I don’t really have the greatest amount of experience getting good topology for clothes, so I don’t know if what you have there is bad or not). The arms and legs need work; there’s a specific way of doing elbows/knees I discovered when looking at the makehuman model, that really helps with the shape (I’d recommend finding some other reference though, the edge loops in makehuman are a little scrambled and it took me a few minutes to make sense of them).
Modeling is a somewhat technical process; you need to know how to layout edge flow correctly, or you’ll have a horrible time getting the shape you want (though once you hit the right edge flow, the shape almost makes itself). This is why a lot of people prefer sculpting, which is more intuitive and less technical (though I personally suck at it).
Joe
Thank you to everyone for their critique! It’s much appreciated… and extremely helpful.
I changed the old man a lot. He looks much improved. I did little work as far as editing the topology, because I don’t want to add too many polys. He’s high-poly enough as it is. That’s not set in stone, though; I could possibly do more edits.
Edits made:
More critique on the old man would be great. I’m working on rigging him and getting the little boy up to par with the new eyebrows, the shoulder fix, and some better-planned seams for UV.
In general I think the old man needs more levels in his face. By that I mean deeper eyesockets, a more prominent chin (or simply more separation between chin & lips), an interesting brow line shape, more depth levels in the bottom nose area. Could probably sink his temples, too, and give him eyelids & bags (maybe). Seems you’re timid to really push & pull at his face. Remember: blender has undo!
I’m not much into wrinkles on tooney characters since it tends to distract from the simplicity, but you could definitely sink & build the bone structure to add a little more character.
Love his body proportions, but perplexed about the squarish legs. Squarish is okay, but I don’t see it anywhere else, so the legs stand out in that regard.
You’re doing well, just beef up your confidence and go to it! That’s my $.02. Cheers!
Well, I don’t want him too toony, but I did have fun with this suggestion. I made the chin longer, gave the brows more definition, and made the nose larger and with kookier features. I also sunk in the eyes a bit. And the squareness of the legs has been fixed.
I think it turned out quite nicely, thank you!
